


la bikina

by evenifwecantfindheaven



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:47:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23660287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evenifwecantfindheaven/pseuds/evenifwecantfindheaven
Summary: AU; Determined to keep his partner in song at his side, Ernesto decides to let Héctor live and order a hit on Imelda. A vastly different future for the Rivera family-and for Ernesto de la Cruz-unfolds.
Relationships: Héctor Rivera/Imelda Rivera
Comments: 85
Kudos: 114





	1. 1921

“This was _your_ dream. You’ll manage.”

_I could kill him._

“I can’t do this without your songs, Héctor!”

“I’m going home, Ernesto! Hate me if you want, but my mind is made up.”

_I could kill him._

It would be so easy. A smile. A toast. An ounce of poison. _Salud!_ A friendly offer to walk him to the train station. A little chit chat. A limp body tossed over a shoulder like a rag doll. An unmarked shallow grave.

He could do it.

The songs, the guitar, he could take all of it.

But Ernesto is not a songwriter. That's the one gift he doesn't have.

Which means that if Héctor dies, the music will die with him.

No. Killing Héctor is not the answer.

“Oh…I could never hate you.”

Héctor doesn’t turn back around right away. Of course not. Ernesto has spent upwards of three months telling Héctor that to go home would be detrimental, that they must keep going, keep working, keep singing, keep playing. One more concert, one more town, one more show and all their dreams will come true. Ernesto had hoped that once they were immersed in their lives as performers, Héctor would forget all about Santa Cecilia. Or at least accept the idea of limiting visits home to two or three weeks a year. But no. Instead, Héctor has been getting progressively homesick. Always talking about how he promised Imelda that he would be home by autumn’s end and how upset he is that he missed Imelda’s birthday and how he and Imelda always do that thing for Christmas and Imelda and Imelda and _Imelda._

There is no other reason. Always _her,_ and her child. If it wasn’t for her, Héctor wouldn’t even be thinking of returning to Santa Cecilia. There’d be no need. After all, his parents and grandparents are gone, and Ernesto is his closest friend. They could go anywhere.

“If you must go, then I’m…I’m coming home with you!” Ernesto declares. “If you’re going to surprise Imelda for Christmas, then I might as well surprise Mamá. But wait...that’s right…I had already lined that one show up for tomorrow. I was really hoping we’d be playing it together, but I suppose I can do it by myself and then take the next train home after.”

Héctor takes in the disappointment on his friend’s face. He sets down his guitar and trunk.

“One more night, and I’m leaving. I mean it, Ernesto. If this is another one of your tricks, I’m taking the first train out no matter what.”

“Deal.”

Héctor closes the door and begins unpacking his things to get ready for his last night in the city.

“You know I would move heaven and earth for you, mi amigo.”

Héctor smiles a little. “I know.”

And it’s true, Ernesto reasons, in a roundabout way.

As soon as the younger man falls asleep, Ernesto opens his drawer, retrieves all the pesos he can carry, and goes down to the nearest bar. He asks to see a man that he knows of, and has kept in his back pocket in case he should ever need him. It’s not his first choice. In an ideal world, Ernesto would do this himself. But it’s impossible. He can’t plausibly leave ahead of Héctor, and once Héctor arrived home, saw Imelda, talked to her, there’d be no way Ernesto could play it off like she left him. He’d have to actually let Héctor discover the body. There’d be a whole investigation. Why did she die, and _how_. It would be a mess.

And the last thing Ernesto wants to do is be messy.

A whispered conversation in a dark alley. Cash exchanged, no names but hers. An address. A promise that more money will be sent once the deed is done.

And Ernesto straightens his tie, goes back to the hotel, and sleeps soundly for the rest of the night.

* * *

A mild frost has fallen over Santa Cecilia, making the ground look extra shiny in the morning light. Imelda watches from the kitchen window as her tiny daughter skips about her family’s courtyard. Two chunky black braids swing as Coco sings off-key at the top of her lungs.

“Papá Noel is coming, Papá Noel is coming! Papá Noel is coming, and he’s bringing Papá home for Christmas!”

Imelda tenses.

“Mija,” Imelda calls. “Who told you that?”

If it was Oscar and Filipe, she’ll slap them silly. No...she’ll take their trumpets away for a month! Or at least until Héctor’s back. At this point, either could be first.

“Papá Noel told it to me in a dream!” Coco sings, off key _and_ in no particular tune to begin with. “Annnnnnd then Papá is going to take us out on tour with him while Tio Nesto stays here and cleans the house!”

“We’re _not_ going out on tour with him,” Imelda snaps. She’s heard that suggestion more than once, though never before from Coco. “I’m not raising my little girl out of moldy hotel rooms.”

“Aww.” Coco folds her arms. “Can we at least get a kitten or a puppy?”

 _Where the hell did that suggestion come from?_ “No, we can’t. We have no need for animals. Now get in here, it’s too cold outside for you.”

Coco sighs, her shoulders drop, and she trudges in. She shrugs off her woolen shawl, leaving it in a heap on the floor.

“Pick that up right now!” Imelda snaps. “Don’t I do enough around here?”

Quietly, Coco scoops up the shawl. She brings it over to the windowsill, sets it there, and rests her arms and head on it. She gazes out the window, lost in thought. She picks up one little foot and sets it back down. The sole of her boot is beginning to wear thin. Imelda has counted the money she has saved about ten times. She has enough for groceries, that’s it. Time will tell if she can afford a new pair of children’s shoes this winter. Hector sends money when he does, regularly, but on no set schedule and in no predictable amount.

What is Coco thinking about, Imelda wonders. Her child has an imagination like none she’s never seen. But out of Coco’s fantastical stories comes some truth. Whether he’s riding on a pegasus or becoming King of Mexico, Coco is always talking about her father.

When he left, he promised he would be home by the time the trees were bare. Now, if he even mentions it in his letters, it’s “maybe next week.” Imelda doesn’t believe him anymore. She reads his letters to Coco, but she makes no guesses as to when he’ll be coming back.

Imelda watches Coco, little chest rising and falling. Suddenly, in a fraction of an instant, the little girl’s pensive expression is replaced with shock, her brown eyes widen, her rosy lips part with a squeal of excitement, and she flings open the door and bolts out of the house as fast as her tiny legs can carry her.

For a moment, Imelda’s heart skips a beat. Could it be…

No, she tells herself. No way.

But it isn’t until she sees that it’s only Oscar and Filipe, trudging back to the front door with coats and schoolbooks, that Imelda’s hope is properly crushed.

“What are you two doing back so early? You just left an hour ago!”

“Senor Gonzales…” Oscar begins.

“…has the flu,” Filipe finishes. “No school today.”

Oscar nods. “Or for the rest of the week.”

Imelda scowls. “Well get in here and make yourselves useful. We’re having chicken enchiladas for dinner”

The twins immediately get to work cutting up vegetables. Coco asks to help them. They place Coco on a chair and give her a small butter knife and a peeled avocado to cut. Imelda starts prepping the meat.

“After this goes in the oven, let’s head over to the plaza,” Oscar suggests to Filipe. “The marketplace will be open, so it’ll be a great place to shine shoes.”

“Yes! We can earn some money to buy that sheet music we wanted!”

“Not yet…first I’ll need to buy a new valve spring for my trumpet.”

“But you’ll need to go to Cordoba to get one of those. We can get sheet music right here in town. Why not save for that first?”

Imelda takes the cold chicken breast she’s holding in her hand and slams it down on the counter as loudly as she can.

“AY! ENOUGH!”

Both twins jump.

“What is it with everyone in this family and music? First you waste your time, then your money, and next thing you know, you’re abandoning everyone who loves you in order to chase a stupid fantasy! I’m done with this! I will go to the plaza to get food, you three will stay here and finish the enchiladas and _none of you_ will be leaving the house for the rest of the week! _Is that understood?”_

Oscar, Filipe, and Coco nod vigorously. Imelda storms out of the room in a huff.

She grabs her large wicker basket, the one that she’ll need in order to carry home all the stuff that she wants to buy. Empty sacks for flour and grain go inside, as does her fully loaded coin purse. She walks out, leaving her concerned, confused family behind.

* * *

Deep breaths, one boot in front of the other. She turns into the alley behind several vacant homes, ready to take a shortcut. There’s no one else in sight, All the neighbors are working or shopping.

The rustling of leaves behind her. She doesn’t notice.

How much flour can she afford? How much rice, how many beans? Any vegetables at all? And what can she do about those damn shoes?

The shuffling of feet behind her. She doesn’t notice.

He’ll send money soon, won’t he? He loves her, doesn’t he? He’ll be home someday, won’t he?

_Crack!_

* * *

Héctor spends every waking hour, even through a practice session with Ernesto, daydreaming of his homecoming. He can feel the weight of Imelda in his arms as he lifts her up and spins her around, and taste her lips on his. She won’t be as excited to see him as she was last time. She seemed annoyed with him in her last few letters. He doesn’t blame her. He’ll apologize. He’ll promise not to go out on tour again for at least ten years. She’ll think he’s exaggerating, but he’ll mean it. He doesn’t want to be away from her and Coco anymore. He’ll get the money somewhere. He can play at weddings and quinceneras and other parties. He’ll have to work every holiday-but at night he’ll be coming home to them.

And Ernesto will just have to deal with it.

* * *

When she wakes up, it’s late afternoon. She knows nothing of how long she’s been unconscious. Just that something-or, more likely, _someone_ -struck her over the head. Hard. Causing her to black out.

And yet now, she feels no pain at all.

She’s no longer wearing her shawl, but she doesn’t feel the winter chill on her skin.

The alley is gone, as are all other things familiar save for the deep violet fabric of her dress and the sleek leather boots on her feet. To one side of her is a brilliant land occupied by a strange conglomeration of architecture, from pyramids to pueblos to city apartments. To the other side, she appears to be standing on a large cliff overlooking a bottomless expanse of inky black.

Where have they taken her? Is she dreaming?

Around her, creatures are materializing. No, not creatures-people. But they take the form of skeletons. Elders with grey hair spin and bounce like children on a playground. Youngsters clap their hands and wiggle their bare phalanges in amusement. Adults reflect Imelda’s own confusion as they take in their surroundings.

She’s _definitely_ dreaming.

The elderly skeletons race past a sign that claims to point to the department of family reunions. Skeletal nuns in habits come out and beckon to the children. “Come, let us help you find your ancestors.” One adult female skeleton breaks down sobbing under a banner that reads, “Bienvenido a la Tierra de los Muertos.”

But that would mean…

…no…

…she can’t be…

…there’s no way that…

She looks down and sees her own fleshless palms.

A scream that rivals the roar of a beast escapes her mouth.

She turns and runs for the pit that she now knows separates her from the land of the living and braces herself for the impact. But an invisible force stops her from jumping, from moving any part of herself over the edge. She throws herself Again. And again. Nothing changes.

“It’s not going to work.”

She turns around to find a nun standing a few feet away from her.

“Who are you?” she shouts. “God? A saint?”

“No, ma’am,” says the nun calmly. “I’m just here to help.”

Imelda straightens herself up. “I _demand_ to speak to the person in charge! This is outrageous! I’m twenty-two years old! I’m perfectly healthy! And I have a child at home, so I can’t die. I _refuse.”_

The nun’s face remains stoic. “I’m sorry to hear that you’re leaving a child behind. But death, like life, cannot be undone. The good news is that you’ll remain here as long as memories of you exist in the land of the living. Now go on.” She gestures at the department of family reunions sign. “Go find your dearly departed family. Come back here on dia de Muertos.”

Imelda reaches for her purse, then remembers it’s gone. She begins marching down the path. Surely someone at the department of family reunions will know how to reunite her with her _living_ family.

* * *

Its several hours of shouting, snapping, and demanding before Imelda’s denial begins to shake. As the sun lowers over the land of the dead, she finally sits down to do the intake paperwork. She must fill out a list of her living family, “So that we can contact you upon their arrival.” That’s easy. Héctor, Coco, Oscar, Filipe, and, for good measure, her Papá. Whose list will she be on? Who in this place is going to care that she’s arrived? Other than her Mama, who she has no desire to ever see again.

She has to write down all her personal information, including what she can tell about the circumstances of her death. It was no accident, that’s for certain, but who could have done it? One of the half-dozen idiots who tried to woo her before she got married? Why would they be coming after her _now?_ She knows her father is unhappy with her, especially since the twins ran away and she took them in, but he’s far too lost in his liquor to think of revenge. Ernesto de la Cruz is probably her worst enemy, but he’s halfway across the country.

With Héctor.

She’s never going to see the love of her life again.

She’ll never walk Coco to school or help her with homework. She won’t look sternly into the eyes of a young man wishing to court her daughter or plan her wedding. She will never be an abuela.

Her life is over.

She lists her most likely resting place as “Santa Cecilia church cemetery.” It wouldn’t make sense for her to end up anywhere else.

If she ever gets a funeral at all.

* * *

When they finally arrive in Santa Cecilia, Ernesto insists on walking Héctor home. “Por favor, let me just come to your house and sit down for two seconds before Mama starts carrying on.”

It is still daylight when they come walking up the path. Héctor’s heart starts racing when he sees a curtain move aside. A tiny face appears just above the windowsill. The front door opens. A tiny pair of legs races down the path, Coco leaps into Héctor’s arms…

…and immediately starts sobbing.

“Mi Corazon, what’s wrong?” Héctor asks softly.

“Mamá…” Coco whimpers. “Mamá’s gone.”

Héctor’s stride quickens as he walks up to the house holding his daughter to his chest.

Once he gets inside, he sees Oscar and Filipe standing back against the wall. They look up at Héctor with weary, dark-rimmed eyes.

“Where’s Imelda?”

The twins look at each other.

“Where’s my wife?” Héctor asks again.

“She left,” Filipe finally speaks.

Héctor shakes his head. No. That’s impossible. Imelda would never walk away from her family. She loves them. They mean everything to her.

“She was angry,” explains Filipe. “Saying she was fed up with her whole family…”

“…wasting our lives on music,” Oscar finishes.

Both twins sigh. “We're so sorry. It’s our fault.”

No, Héctor thinks. It’s not their twins fault. It’s his.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Héctor balances Coco more securely on his hip as he motions for the twins to come closer. “If Imelda is tired of music, then we will just have to stop singing and playing it.”

Ernesto, who’s been quietly lurking in the doorway, shakes with a start.

_“What?”_

“Just for now,” Héctor assures everyone. “Until we find her and speak to her. Once we’ve reassured her that we’ve got our priorities in order, once we get her blessing, everything can go back to normal. But for now, we will pack up our instruments, our sheet music, everything. We’ll put it in storage.”

Oscar and Filipe nod in agreement, then scramble to pack up their trumpets which are lying on the dining room table.

“Héctor,” Ernesto nervously chuckles. “This is loco! You’re talking about giving up music for a woman who _abandoned_ you. She’s gone!”

“She’s not gone,” Héctor snaps. “She’s just missing! No more music, not until she comes back.”

Héctor feels a tug on his shoulder. Large red-rimmed eyes look into his.

“No more...Remember Me?”

“We can still sing that,” Héctor concedes. “But that’s it. No other songs. Okay?”

“Si, Papá.”

The twins come over, Oscar holding both trumpet cases and Filipe holding a ladder so they can put the instruments in the attic.

“Here,” Héctor uses his free arm to grab his guitar case to hand to them. “Take this, too.”

“No!” Ernesto grabs the case out of Héctor's hand. “Are you out of your mind? You can’t…”

“Yes I can!” Héctor shouts, forcefully taking the case back and shoving it in Filipe’s direction. “My family is more important to me than music, they always have been, and they always will be. I’m going to find my wife, and I’m going to show her that I’m ready to be the husband she deserves. You can either support me, or you can go home!”

Coco leans her weight into Héctor's shoulder, letting out a sigh that feels too heavy to have come from someone so small. He holds her tight.

Ernesto visibly winces as the guitar case disappears. But he says, “Fine, Héctor. I will help you look for Imelda. Where could she have gone? To her parents’ house?” Hector gives Ernesto a funny look. “No?” Ernesto guesses from the look on Hector’s face. “Does she have any siblings?”

“Yes,” Oscar and Filipe answer in unison.

“Oh, right. Any _other_ relatives? At all?”

“No,” the twins answer again.

“Any…friends?”

“Not that we know of,” the twins answer.

“I’m sure she does,” Héctor says, reassuring the boys, Coco, and himself. “We’ll find her.”


	2. 1922

Héctor, Oscar, and Filipe show up on every doorstep in Santa Cecilia. Every neighbor they have, every shopkeeper who comes to sell wares, every mariachi who passes through the plaza, is interrogated about the whereabouts of Imelda Rivera. Ernesto accompanies Héctor on some of these excursions, mostly hanging back and chatting up neighbors while Héctor looks around.

By the second week in January, every house has been searched. There is no trace of Imelda anywhere.

One day, Ernesto comes to Héctor’s house and finds the younger man crouched by the window, waiting, holding Imelda’s nightdress (the only article of clothing she left behind) and a pile of paper. He’s got a pen in his hand.

“Héctor, what are you doing? Are you…writing another song?”

“No,” Héctor snaps. “No music.”

Ernesto walks closer. He sees that Héctor is holding a pile of letters that Imelda sent to him while he was out on tour. He has circled some of the sentences she wrote. Anything where Imelda sounded irritated or exasperated. Anything where she asked when he was coming home.

“I’m truly sorry, Héctor,” Ernesto leans against the wall nearby. “I never thought that we’d come back home and find that your wife had walked out on you.”

Héctor shakes his head, then stands up.

“This is my fault. Not yours.” He sets down everything he was holding. “Ernesto, you should go.”

“Very well. I promised Mamá I’d be home for dinner anyway. But you know I’m here for you, mi amigo.”

“No, I mean you should leave Santa Cecilia. Go back to the city. Follow your dream.”

“What? No. Héctor…Imelda isn’t coming back. I’m sure of it.” Héctor gives him a look that could shatter glass. “You know what that woman is like when she makes up her mind about something. She’s gone. It’s time for you to move on. You need to get out of your head, leave this place, focus on your music. As soon as you can find an appropriate placement for Coco...”

_“Placement?”_

“Héctor, surely you realize that you can’t raise a little girl on your own. You’ll have to find a family to adopt her. I'm sure we can find someone wonderful.”

“Get out,” Héctor seethes.

"Amigo..."

“Get out of my house! get out of Santa Cecilia, get out of my life! Why are you even here? You didn’t even want to come home in the first place! You could have gone back out on tour weeks ago!”

“Not without your songs I couldn't!” Ernesto blurts out.

Héctor is quiet for a moment before vanishing into his bedroom. He comes out a few minutes later with his song book.

He opens it and begins ripping pages out.

“Héctor, what are you doing? That’s your life’s work!”

Out comes the love ballad that Héctor wrote to propose to Imelda. Out comes the song he wrote for their first anniversary, and the one for their second, and the one for their third. Out comes _Un Poco Loco_. Out comes _Remember Me._

Héctor shoves the extracted pages into the pocket of his coat. Then he throws the book at Ernesto, nearly hitting him in the face.

“There. All yours.”

Ernesto is stunned. Héctor has been so protective of his music. He’s specifically forbidden Ernesto to perform the songs he wrote without him. And now here he is, just handing most of them over.

“Are you sure, Héctor? If you give them to me now, then you’ll never be able to perform them for money again.”

“I’m done performing! Don’t you get it? Music has cost me the love of my life. I’m not going to let it cost me my daughter, too. Now get out. Go. Don’t come back here.”

* * *

Imelda feels their memories in her bones. Confusion, sadness, anger, and longing ebb and flow. She is deeply touched by how much her family thinks about her. Especially Héctor. She hates herself for having doubted his love. She hates herself for a lot of things. Mainly, what she didn’t appreciate enough while she still had it. Coco, her brothers, Héctor, _life._

Because she’s not in contact with any of her dead family members, she is assigned a small apartment to live in. She doesn’t go anywhere, talk to anyone, or do anything. She comforts herself by writing strongly-worded letters to the department of new arrivals every night, demanding that they send her back, although deep down she knows that it’s not going to work.

Her new landlord catches her on the way to the mailbox one day, and gently reminds her that she needs to start paying rent soon. She starts repairing shoes for money. But she never speaks. She just takes the shoes from the customers, does her work, and then goes home. People whisper about her, the antisocial young woman with no family and no voice. She decides not to care.

One afternoon, while she is bent over a table of leather and cork trying her hand at making a pair of shoes from scratch, Imelda hears squealing at the window of her apartment. To her surprise, there is a bright neon-speckled alebrije hovering and tapping at the glass. She opens the shutters and in it flies, tumbling and tripping across the floor like a…well, she’s not sure exactly what. It looks like a lion cub crossed with a calf crossed with a swan. When Imelda sits down on the floor, the creature runs to her and flings itself down in her lap, purring and chirping with delight.

“You came here to help me, didn’t you?”

The creature nuzzles her arm in response. It almost looks like it’s nodding.

“Well, I don’t need help,” Imelda begins.

The creature folds back an ear in displeasure, sits back on its haunches, and tilts its head, as if to say, “You can’t possibly be serious. Look at yourself.”

“Unless maybe _you_ know how to make me be alive again?” Imelda asks hopefully.

It stretches out on the ground, eyes wide and sad, and thumps down with defeat. It does not have this power.

“All right, if you want to do something for me…here it is. I want you to go to the land of the living and look after my family. Protect them. Comfort them. Do everything I can’t. Can you do that?”

The kitten-cub-chick lets out a high pitched squeak and flies away.

* * *

He doesn’t stop looking. He writes letters to every hotel in Mexico, each plea to return home more passionate than the last. He paints posters with her name and a description and a crude drawing. Coco helps.

He stands in the plaza with his toddler on his hip, showing the posters to every visitor from out of town, begging them to tell Imelda he’s sorry and that he will do anything for her if she'll just come home. Most of the visitors are sympathetic, but none have any news.

The letters he sends out are returned unopened. “No such woman stays here,” scrawled across the front. It's not her handwriting. He’d know.

In the meantime, he takes odd jobs around town, mending fences and cleaning gutters for old widows who fuss over Coco and give her cookies and milk while she asks them each if they’ve seen her Mamá anywhere.

Coco begins to cry when little things don’t go her way. She wasn’t like that at all before. Héctor feels awful. He promises that he’ll do everything he can to convince Mamá to come home. He promises that he’ll never leave again. Coco starts sleeping on her mother’s side of their bed every night. Both she and Héctor have figured out that Imelda’s pillow still smells like her.

One day, when Coco and Héctor are walking home from work, a tabby kitten comes around from behind a tree and starts following them. Héctor is about to scoop up his child to protect her from the unfamiliar creature when it starts purring loudly and rubbing itself up against Coco’s leg.

Coco’s face lights up with a smile that Héctor hasn’t seen in months. Since before he went out on tour.

“Look, Papá! We have a cat now!”

Héctor sighs as Coco lifts the scraggly tabby to her chest and gives it a hug.

“It would appear that we do.”

Once they get to the house, Coco sets out a saucer of milk for the kitty. That night, it falls asleep at the foot of the bed. It stays there every night, bolting upright and growling at the slightest noise. It reminds him of a story that Imelda told him once, about a fierce lion that saves a whole town by standing guard so that no harm can come to it. So Héctor names the cat after the lion in the story.

"Lay down, Pepita. No one is hunting us tonight."

* * *

In the early spring, Héctor catches the twins going up to their attic to get their trumpets out. He’s angry until they explain to him that they don’t intend to play them, they’re just packing their things to move out. They don’t want to trouble Héctor any longer, so they’ll be going home to their father.

Héctor won’t hear of it. They are Imelda’s brothers, and Coco’s uncles. They are family and they should stick together. Oscar and Filipe are grateful, but they decide together to stop going to school and learn a trade. They want to learn how to make and repair musical instruments. Héctor isn’t happy about it, but he lets it go. It’s crafting, not performing. And it’s practical and will earn them a living. Imelda will be pleased.

* * *

In the summer, the local furniture store owner decides to take Héctor on as a part-time apprentice. “Normally boys start out much younger than you, but I admire your work ethic, Señor Rivera.”

Héctor has never heard those words before Imelda will be proud.

On his first day, he walks in with Coco’s hand in his. The upholsterer’s two children are in the shop as well, running necessary materials from one worker to another.

“I can help too,” Coco shyly approaches the youngest child, a boy. “My name’s Coco.”

“Nice to meet you,” the boy hands her a fistful of thimbles. “I’m Julio.”

* * *

It’s their first dia de muertos without Imelda, and her absence is felt.

The ofrenda room is decked with marigolds and photos and offerings for all three of Coco’s deceased grandparents. Héctor tells stories about his parents, Oscar and Filipe share the good memories they have of their Mamá. They talk to Coco about how her ancestors live in the land of the dead and she’ll get to see them again one day.

Coco gets quiet for a moment.

“Is that where Mamá went?”

Héctor, Oscar, and Filipe all jump in with reassurances , filling those sad brown eyes with hope that she’ll get to see her Mamá again someday, in the flesh, whenever she decides to come back home.

Imelda, meanwhile, spends the night in prison for assaulting two security guards at the marigold bridge.


	3. 1928

**A/N: Special thanks to bandtrees for reviewing my last two chapters, you're the real MVP! If anyone else is reading and wants me to check out their Coco fics (or anyone's Coco fics) feel free to leave recs!**

Imelda twirls a gold ring around her left finger, lost in thought. Her real wedding ring is long gone-she didn’t wake up wearing it in the land of the dead-so she bought a new one to wear in its place. She never takes it off.

The memories are still as strong as they day she arrived here. She is thought of often, but never without the harsh undertone of pain. Shouldn’t the people who loved her be able to enjoy remembering her by now, at least some of the time? Between this, and the fact that she has never been able to cross the bridge on dia de muertos, she strongly suspects that her family has no idea she’s dead.

But…what if she’s wrong?

What if they _do_ know, and they don’t like to think about her and have chosen not to put her photo on the ofrenda?

She wouldn’t blame her brothers for being angry with her after the way she treated them. Or Coco, for that matter. As for Héctor…maybe he just doesn’t want her around anymore. Heaven knows enough people have tried to tell him that he could do better than her, maybe he’s finally listening. Maybe it’s easier for him to see her flaws now that she’s gone.

Maybe there’s someone else.

Or maybe he just wants to forget her.

The possibilities destroy her. Imelda knows nothing about where she stands with the people who matter to her most in the universe. She hasn’t for thousands of nights.

She cannot imagine any worse form of torture.

She tries to remember them, down to the last detail. The way that Oscar and Filipe would snicker when they reached for the same thing and bumped into each other, the way Coco’s hair smelled, the way Héctor’s goatee brushed against her nose when he kissed her on the forehead. She’s come to rely on these memories, the few fragments of life that no one can take away from her.

* * *

Héctor is a man now, and he looks it. He’s still thinner than a promise from Ernesto de la Cruz, but the spring in his step is gone. He hasn’t left Santa Cecilia in years, slept anywhere but his own home, been within ten feet of a guitar, or slipped the gold band from his left ring finger. He touches it when he needs her the most, and tries to remember the parts of her that couldn’t be captured in the photograph he keeps on his bureau. The way she smelled, like honey and spring rain. The feel of her weight against his chest when he caught her in his arms and spun her around. The sound of her voice.

It hurts to remember, but it would hurt even more to forget.

Numerous other women have offered to replace the ring, but he won’t hear of it. In the eyes of the church, the law, and himself, Imelda is his wife. His friends try to talk him into moving on. They remind him that she chose to desert him, that he has no reason to believe she will ever return, that it’s long past time to give up hope. And if he was alone, perhaps he would consider it. But he’s not. After all he’s done, Imelda might be able to forget him, but she will _never_ forget her daughter or her family. She will come back someday.

Coco has grown into a beautiful girl of nine. She has her Mamá’s button nose and twinkly brown eyes, but her Papá’s high cheekbones and lanky frame. Her bedroom is filled with wooden toys and pencil drawings and schoolbooks. She keeps a drawer full of paper. Letters from Héctor when he was out on tour, copies of the songs and poems that he wrote for her and for her mother. Sometimes, she asks to see the letters Mamá wrote to Papá, and Héctor lets her look at them, but he stores them in his room. Each one is etched in his memory by now, he’s spent enough hours pouring over them, but still he rereads them, clinging to every “mi amor” and “next time I see you,” destroying himself over every “I miss you,” and “when are you coming back?”

Oscar and Filipe still live at home, though they have their own occupations and activities during the day. In lieu of paying rent, Filipe cooks and Oscar cleans, which everyone in the family is happy with. Especially Coco, who has no problem saying that her Papá could be anything but a chef.

Héctor and his former employer have gone into business together, and are doing better than ever. The town’s furniture shop is now called “Lopez y Rivera Tienda de Muebles.” Senor Lopez was a bit perplexed when one of Héctor’s conditions for partnering up was that they not sing or play music anywhere near the shop, but he agreed in exchange for 50% ownership of all Héctor’s designs. They all eat dinner together on Sundays after church. Héctor and the twins sit with Señor and Señora Lopez, talking shop and politics and gossip. Coco sits with Rosita and Julio, chattering and playing games and making up stories.

At night, they all walk home in the dusk, the twins still bubbly from one too many drinks, Coco chattering to Héctor about all the fun she’s had, and Pepita chasing imaginary birds at their heels.

“Rosita’s quinceañera is coming up, and I need to make her something extra special,” Coco says. “She’s like a big sister to me.”

“Si, I suppose she is. And Julio is like a brother?”

Coco makes a face. “No! He isn’t! That would be…wrong.”

Héctor chuckles. But then a few days later, Julio wins a flower in a spelling bee at school and gives it to Coco. She blushes shyly as she shows it off to everyone at the shop that afternoon, and then she goes home, presses it between the pages of a book, and mounts it on her wall.

After he catches Coco kissing the flower goodnight before she goes to bed, Héctor is never able to look at the cherub-cheeked boy quite the same way again.

After Coco goes to sleep, Héctor has about an hour left in his day. And he uses that hour, and a good part of each Saturday, to read.

He can’t leave Santa Cecilia to look for Imelda, because she might come back while he’s gone. He doesn’t have the money to hire a private investigator to look for her, either.

But he can read.

His bureau, the one that his photo with Imelda still sits atop, holds a backlog of the Santa Cecilia newspaper, as well as the papers from neighboring towns and every major city in Central Mexico. Every single one he has been able to get his hands on that was published after the day she walked out. He scours every last line for any hint of his missing wife. By the light of a lamp, he combs through local news, national news, wedding and birth announcements, obituaries, fashion columns, sports pages, and rave reviews of Ernesto de la Cruz’s latest concerts. With a pen, he circles any description of a person with the faintest prayer of being her. “Female patron from out-of-town claims to have been poisoned by restaurant,” “Break in at local boutique, purple ribbon found at crime scene,” “Adult female body discovered on construction site.”

The articles he marks, he cuts out and keeps in the top drawer, categorized by year and location. Anytime a woman dies and is not identified, Héctor sends that paper a description of Imelda. Anytime a woman named Imelda is mentioned, no matter what her surname, Héctor writes that paper imploring them to let her know that her family forgives her and misses her and just wants her to come home.

Most of the time, he gets no response at all. A few sympathetic editors write back to let him know that their town’s Imelda is too old or too young or too locally-born-and-bred to be his wife. The coroner’s office in Mexico City sends him a letter promising that if they ever find anyone matching her description, they will let him know, and he doesn’t have to keep writing them every few months.

On the hardest nights, he wonders if perhaps something tragic has happened to her. If something tragic happened to her a very long time ago. But he has no reason to believe that’s any more likely than any other scenario, so he has no excuse to stop looking for her or waiting for her. He has no idea whether the love of his life is alive or dead. He cannot imagine any worse form of torture.

Most people in town know that he will pay good money for out-of-town newspapers. But only Coco knows the full extent of his devotion. After she’s gotten ready for bed each night, she comes to find him and sees all his materials spread out. Sometimes, after they sing their lullaby, he shows her his records. It comforts her to know that he’s always looking.

“I hope she comes back tomorrow,” Coco mumbles sleepily as she gives her Papá a hug goodnight.

“So do I, mi corazon.”

* * *

Things haven’t turned out exactly as Ernesto de la Cruz hoped they would.

They’ve turned out better.

Ernesto wasn’t sure at first, about going out on tour without his wingman. But the very first time he stepped into a spotlight alone, armed with nothing but the songs he’d been gifted and the guitar he’d commissioned to look exactly like Héctor’s guitar only shinier, he realized that his amigo had only been holding back. Now, every person in the audience was focused on him. When they applauded, they applauded for _him_.

It didn’t take long for him to become an overnight sensation. Stacks of money in every bank, hoards of fans around every corner, a beautiful manor in Mexico City, a girlfriend in every town he performs in, and treasure beyond compare. Not even thirty-five, and Ernesto has achieved all of his wildest dreams.

Well…all but one.

He has always fantasized about returning to Santa Cecilia, and just once walking the cobbled streets of his childhood a world-reknown musician. And someday, he will, he reasons, once he’s starred in a few movies. That should render even the most cynical townsfolk awestruck by his presence.

The truth is, he’s avoiding Héctor. Not because of what happened to Imelda. Héctor wouldn’t put that together in a hundred years. But when Héctor gave Ernesto permission to use his songs, they didn’t exactly say anything about who would be taking credit for writing them. Which of course, Ernesto had done. What kind of a Mexican icon would he be if he needed some other guy to write his songs for him? According to Ernesto’s cousins in Santa Cecilia, Héctor hasn’t said anything thus far. But maybe, Ernesto coming back to Santa Cecilia is what would push Héctor over the edge. And he can’t have that.

After one particularly fantastic performance, complete with two dozen backup dancers and copious amounts of glitter, Ernesto begins to walk to the car that will take him to his hotel. Through the formation of security guards that flank him in all sides, he sees a group of fans surrounding the car. One man wearing a huge white sombrero, just like his, and about four young señoritas, in white dresses dripping with gold sequins. All of them begin squealing as he approaches.

“De la Cruz!” one of the girls screams.

“Mi encanta tu, Ernesto!”

“Can I have your autograph? Please?”

“Will you sign my napkin?”

“Will you sign my wrist?”

“I’ll let you sign my bosom.”

The last comment turns Ernesto’s head. When he sees that all four of the girls have plunging necklines that leave very little to the imagination, he motions for his security guards to step aside and asks for a pen. He signs each girl’s item or extremity with his name, the number of his hotel room, and a heart, letting his gaze linger on the most attractive features of each one. They blush, swoon, and melt before his eyes. He has a feeling that he’s in for a wonderful stay.

Lastly, Ernesto turns to the one man in the group and holds out his pen.

He flashes a pearly white grin to hide his surprise when he sees what’s under the sombrero.

The one man who knows what Ernesto is capable of.

He puts on a shy smile as he hands Ernesto a flyer for the concert to sign. Ernesto signs it, not with a name, but with a meeting place and time.

Two hours later, Ernesto finds himself back in the same bar that he visited seven years ago. Just like last time, he’s alone, and wearing civilian clothes and the plainest hat he owns. When he locks eyes with the man in question, he wanders out back to the alley.

In a few minutes, he is joined.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” Ernesto says.

“Nor did I expect you to become so…what’s the word? Opulent?”

Ernesto inches further down the alley. He is followed.

“The price of your silence has gone up?”

“I wouldn’t call it a price. I would call it…a gratuity.”

“Please. There’s no need to mince words.”

“All right then. I’ll need one hundred thousand pesos by the end of the week.”

“I understand.” Ernesto reaches for the inside pocket of his jacket. Then he stops.

“Tell me one thing, before I give you your first installment. What exactly did you do with Imelda Rivera?”

“I killed her, of course."

“After that?”

“I kept her hidden until nightfall, and then I buried her under a mango tree.”

“On whose property?”

“Her own.”

Ernesto’s face lights up. That's absolutely brilliant! No one will ever think to look there!

“Excellent, Señor. Thank you for your service.”

And Ernesto reaches into his pocket.

By the time his nemesis realizes that he's at the business end of a gun, it's too late to scream.


	4. 1935

Long, thin braids bounce on Coco’s shoulders as she runs through the plaza, the warm autumn breeze kissing her cheeks, long fingers brushing against her own. Her heart flutters at his touch, as it always has.

It’s Friday evening. The furniture shop is closed. Papá will be at home reading newspapers for the rest of the day. He knows she’s out with “some friends” and won’t worry about her until midnight. It’s not that Papá doesn’t want her seeing Julio. They’ve been sweethearts for years, and Héctor officially gave them permission to start courting when she turned sixteen. The thing is, when Papá _knows_ she’s out alone with Julio, he tends to ask more questions about where they’re going and what they’re doing and tell them exactly when he expects her back home. Typical fatherly stuff, doing everything he can to prevent his little girl from original sin.

There’s a chance that he would actually _prefer_ every other parent’s worst nightmare to what Coco is doing right now.

“We made it just in time!” Coco breathes, as they come to a stop at the very edge of a small crowd.

The moment the words leave her lips, a trumpet begins to play. Her boyfriend turns to face her, chest heaving as he catches his own breath, warmth and excitement in his brown eyes. He places his blue, tasseled sombrero on his head.

“Whenever you’re ready, mi cielito.”

She gathers up the long folds of her pink-and-white skirt and begins to dance.

 _Señoras y señores  
_ _Buenas tardes, buenas noches  
_ _Buenas tardes, buenas noches  
_ _Señoritas y señores_

 _To be here with you tonight  
_ _Brings me joy, que alegria  
_ _For this music is my language  
_ _And the world es mi familia_

For over ten years, Coco has had no new music in her life at all. She loves almost every song that the mariachis at the plaza play-the faster and more exciting, the better-but this song in particular always feels strangely comforting. Like an old friend. She has no memory of it, but it doesn’t quite feel _new_. Then again, the only old songs she can remember are the ones she heard over and over, most of which Papá wrote himself.

No matter how fast she moves, she can't shake the feeling that she's betraying him by being here. Twirling and bouncing in the dancing shoes that Rosita secretly bought her for her birthday. Feeling the rhythm in her bones as she and the boy she loves move in perfect time, their bodies never touching but connected by invisible threads, working as one.

It’s the most wonderful wrong thing she has ever done.

“This song is your favorite, isn’t it?” Julio whispers in her ear as the final notes play.

“One of my favorites, si!”

“What’s your absolute favorite?”

Coco thinks for a moment.

“Cielito Lindo,” she says.

The mariachis begin to play their next song, and they take flight once again. Song after song, they dance until they are out of breath, faces flushed and aching from smiling.

At the end of the night, Julio walks Coco almost all the way, home, holding her hand and singing quietly with her. They try to sing romantic duets they’ve heard, making up lyrics to fill in the pieces they’ve forgotten, whispering and giggling. Before parting ways, he coaxes her into a shadow for a kiss goodnight. It’s a much longer, deeper kiss than anyone would approve of.

“I’ll see you again tomorrow?” Julio whispers hopefully.

“Of course mi cielito,” Coco responds, a delightful shiver running up her spine as he strokes her cheek and plants one last kiss on her lips.

When Coco opens the gate leading to her family’s courtyard, Pepita quickly scurries over to the to greet her, nuzzling her legs and purring as soon as Coco picks her up give her a cuddle. She sees that her tios aren’t home yet, up to their own Friday night shenanigans surely, and that the light in the master bedroom is still on. She plucks herself a mango (one of the last of the season, by the looks of the tree) and munches on its sweet, thick insides as she crosses the dusty yard, warm with dry summer air.

Papá is sitting upright on his bed, fast asleep with his back flat against the wall and his head slumped over like a rag doll’s. He is surrounded by papers, per the norm. As soon as Coco sets the Pepita down, the cat begins stepping all over the latest copies of the _Santa Cecilia Periodico_ and _El Universal_ and _La Voz Nueva_.

“No, Pepita!” Coco whispers harshly as she plunks the cat down on the floor, causing her faithful companion to storm off in a huff, only to sit down right by the bedroom door and look back to make sure Coco is still there. Coco stifles a giggle as she packs up all the papers, making sure to sort them into all the right folders, the read from the unread, the old from the new. Papá was in the middle of writing a letter to a prison in Monterrey, asking if the woman who was arrested last week for clubbing a bass player over the head with his own instrument matches his missing wife’s description. Coco puts the ink and pen away and sticks the letter and envelope in with the article it relates to.

She pulls back the blanket, grabs his wrists, and with one heave, manages to slide Héctor Rivera’s scrawny body down into its correct place without bumping his head. He’ll be sleeping in his clothes again, but it’ll have to do. She smooths his head is flat back on the pillow. He looks so vulnerable, face unshaven, hair too long and uncombed, limbs sprawled around him limp as ribbons.

“Melda?” he mumbles. “I’m coming.”

Coco’s heart sinks as she watches the person she loves most in the world turn over and drop his arm down on the vacant right side of the bed. Pepita dutifully hops on the mattress and wiggles her way to his side. She curls her warm body into the crook of his arm and purrs. Coco smiles as she gives the faithful tabby a scratch on the head goodnight.

Coco leaves for her own room and slips into her nightgown-the one her mother left behind. She’s not entirely sure how she feels about using it, or her mother’s hairbrush, hairpins, or sheets, but it’s not like she can ask her Papá to buy her stuff she already has.

Coco hopes that her Mamá will come back one day. But she’s not sure if she _believes_ it will happen. And she feels terrible about it. Worse yet, as much as she longs for a happy tear-filled hug-filled reunion, she’s not sure how it would go if her mother _did_ suddenly turn up on their doorstep. What do you say to someone who steps out for groceries and never comes back? Who decides to miss out on thirteen years of her family's lives without even saying goodbye?

Unless, of course, something tragic happened to her. But Coco has no reason to assume that’s more or less likely than any other scenario. It’s the most painful facet of her otherwise beautiful life.

* * *

Thirteen years down. Nearly a decade and a half of wondering, waiting, of craving music and love.

Imelda busies herself with shoe repair and shoe-making most of the year. She’s moved out of the apartment and set up a small shop for herself, which she resides above. She wouldn’t call anyone in the land of the dead a friend, but people like her. They compliment her work and tell her they would never buy a pair of shoes from anyone but her again, and this makes her feel proud.

A sign hangs outside her shop. It says, “Rivera Zapateria. Open 8 to 5 on Weekdays. No Music.” Once in a while, an unfamiliar skeleton will assume that the last sentence must be a joke and throw open the door belting out a song. Imelda will stop whatever she’s doing to slam the door in their face. Sometimes, the customer will come back without singing, and she will serve them. Sometimes not. Whatever, there are new arrivals coming to the land of the dead every day. She can always make ends meet.

A fairly new customer of hers has come in in to have his boots repaired. He’s a spry thing, very young, would remind her of her brothers if it wasn’t for his ludicrously big mustache. Dead about six weeks. While she works, he begins to hum.

“No music!” Imelda snaps.

“Lo siento. I forgot.”

Imelda pulls another stitch. She realizes that the tune he was humming sounded vaguely familiar.

“What was that song, anyway?”

“The one I was just humming? That was The World Es Mi Familia, by Ernesto de la Cruz.”

“You’re wrong. That song is by Héctor Rivera. He and Ernesto just perform it together.”

The customer looks very confused now. “But I thought he always…” he stops, probably for fear of his shoes being ripped apart and thrown in the fireplace.

“Tell me what you know about de la Cruz," Imelda requests as she continues working. "Please."

“Well, he’s a singer...a movie star…according to my sister and her friends, he has a face so perfectly chiseled that it must have been made on a Saturday, because even God himself would want to take a day off to admire such a masterpiece…” the last statement is accompanied by a sarcastic lilt. “I suppose he’s really been famous for a little over a dozen years? That’s when everyone in the city started talking about him, anyway. And ever since then, he started playing a concert here every June. Performed at the governor’s inauguration, too.”

“And all that time, he’s performed alone?”

“Si. I mean, he has orchestra players and backup singers and stuff….but never a _partner_ , no.”

Imelda’s heart swells. Héctor hasn’t performed with Ernesto since she died. That means he and Coco are at home in Santa Cecilia, putting down roots right where they belong.

“And according to the twelve million articles my sister has tacked to her bedroom wall,” the young man continues “De la Cruz writes all his own songs.”

“Those newspapers tell _nothing_ but lies! De la Cruz and my husband grew up together in Santa Cecilia, and let me tell you, Ernesto couldn’t string together a verse to save his soul. He once tried to rhyme kissing with wrestling.”

“Ha! I can’t wait to tell Elisa. She’ll be crushed!”

Then he leans back and sighed, obviously remembering that he won’t be seeing his sister, God willing, for a very long time.

“I keep forgetting.”

Imelda feels sorry for the boy. She has to give him credit, though. Even though he's still grieving, he's managing to create an afterlife for himself. That’s more than she can say.

“I’m almost done with your shoes."

The customer straightens up. “You said your husband wrote _The World Es Mi Familia_? Elisa used to say that Ernesto hadn’t written any new songs in years because he’s waiting for the music to speak to him. I’ll bet that your husband wrote every single one of the songs that de la Cruz performs.”

Imelda is proud that Héctor has parted ways with Ernesto. But it does bother her that Ernesto is apparently taking credit for Héctor’s songs. Héctor might have struck up some kind of deal with him, for all she knows, but Imelda isn’t part of that deal. So later that night, she gets out her paints and makes an addition to her sign.

“Rivera Zapateria. Open 8 to 5 on Weekdays. No Music. Ernesto de la Cruz is a fraud.”

* * *

Once when Coco was twelve, her Papá took her out for the day to go see a film in a neighboring town’s cinema. He insisted that they both clamp their hands over their ears during the opening score. That was bad enough, it got them some funny looks from strangers. But fifteen minutes later, when one of the characters burst into song, Héctor grabbed Coco by the hand and whisked them both out of the theater. It was still a nice enough day, they ate a fancy dinner and Coco got a new dress and ribbons, but ever since then, Héctor has forbidden anyone in his family to go to the movies.

So naturally, when Julio suggests that they take a stagecoach and go to the cinema on Saturday afternoon, Coco is thrilled. Especially when she discovers that the latest major motion picture is _El Camino A Casa_ , a production produced, directed by, and starring Santa Cecilia’s own Ernesto de la Cruz.

Moments after a huge stage and adoring crowd appear on the screen, the big, handsome musician starts strumming on a guitar. Coco tries to ignore the nagging guilt as she leans her head on Julio’s shoulder and squeezes his hand. She’s not doing anything morally wrong, she reminds herself. Just because avoiding music is the one thing that her Papá is truly passionate about…her Papá, who loves her more than life itself, who has given her everything…

 _“Señoras y señores  
_ _Buenas tardes, buenas noches  
_ _Buenas tardes, buenas noches  
_ _Señoritas y señores”_

Coco and Julio exchange a surprised smile. They didn’t know that this was Ernesto de la Cruz’s song! And he’s just as skillful a guitar player as everyone says!

The story is entertaining, especially compounded with the novelty of the big screen. But it's also a bit cliche. Within the first fifteen minutes, it becomes comically obvious that Don Hidalgo, the agent of Ernesto’s musician character, is the story’s villain.

“How can you give up now when you’re so close to reaching your dream?”

“My beautiful wife, Margarita, hasn’t seen me in over five months. You understand, don’t you?”

“No! I need you! No man can play guitar like you can, or sing like you can, or perform for a crowd like you can! Never in my twenty years behind this desk, have I seen a man with your sheer, raw, talent! Oh please, Señor! If you leave me, I won’t be able to make enough money to build the mansion I’ve always dreamed of!”

“There are more important things than money!” Ernesto’s character declares. “Hate me if you want, but my mind is made up! I have got to seize my moment!”

“Oh, dios mio, I could never _hate_ a musician as extraordinary as you!” Don Hidalgo rises to his feet. “If you must go home, then I shall escort you home myself, to ensure that you arrive safely! You know, I would move heaven and _earth_ for you, mi amigo!”

“I know you would!” Ernesto enthusiastically responds. “Just give me five minutes to pack my guitar and songs and we'll be on our way!"

As Ernesto’s character exits the room, the villain emits such a deliciously evil laugh that the audience, Coco and Julio included, can’t help but laugh with him. The esteemed musician returns just as Don Hidalgo is handing a bag of gold to the story’s other oh-so-subtle antagonist, Fernando, a butler who was reportedly rejected from the army for being pathetic. Ernesto overhears Don Hidalgo instruct Fernando to go out ahead of them and kill Ernesto’s entire family and burn down his house before they arrive. A fight scene ensues, complete with fencing, and it ends with Fernando narrowly escaping and Don Hidalgo falling out a stained glass window.

Forty-five action packed minutes follow. The hero must use his strength, his wit, his charm, and his guitar to overcome the odds and reach his home before the villain is able to destroy it. Fernando comes up with many nefarious schemes to hold him up, such as rerouting Ernesto's train and locking him in a bathroom. Finally, Ernesto corners Fernando in a dark alley, makes him confess to his crimes, and then shoots the cowering man in the head.

“Nasty end for a nasty character,” Julio whispers.

Coco looks down at Julio’s watch.

“We still have twenty minutes left,” she replies. “I wonder if he’s really dead.”

When Ernesto gets back to his house, he finds not Fernando but Don Hidalgo waiting for him, broken and bloody but very much alive. The audience gasps. Coco and Julio give each other an excited squeeze.

“What are you doing here?” Ernesto shouts. “Why would you come here when you never wanted to leave the city in the first place?”

“To ruin…your life…as you know it.”

Don Hidalgo withdraws a sword from his belt. This battle is even longer and more dramatic than the last, complete with numerous lacerations, thunder cracking, and even a flame thrower. In the end, good prevails. Ernesto stabs the villain through the heart and buries him under a mango tree in his courtyard. Then Ernesto walks through the door and is immediately greeted by his two young sons. He next heads upstairs to the bedroom, where a ridiculously young, ridiculously attractive woman is lounging around on a bed. She’s inexplicably starting off her day by listening to one of Ernesto’s songs on a gramophone, pining away in a threadbare negligee. Even lying down, it’s obvious that her hipbones jut out from her body.

“Does that woman survive on mint leaves and water?” Coco asks.

“Right?” Julio replies. “Even you aren't going to be that slender after we’ve had two kids.”

“Mhm.” Coco looks over at Julio. “Wait, what did you say?”

He blushes. “Nothing.”

Everyone in the audience is moved when Ernesto serenades his wife, with a sweet, traditional folk song she’s heard before a few times. The parting shot before the credits role is the couple locked in a kiss.

* * *

By the time Coco and Julio arrive back at Santa Cecilia, it’s getting dark. Both of their families are expecting them home for dinner, so they walk as briskly as possible to Coco's street and share a hurried peck before parting ways. Coco skips on home, slips through the gate, greets Pepita, opens the door to the living room...

...and sees her Papá and both of her uncles standing at the door, waiting for her.

This can’t be good.

“Hola, familia…how was your day?”

“Coco, we…”

Héctor puts up a hand to stop Oscar from finishing his thought. Both uncles take a step back.

“We heard that you were dancing in the plaza yesterday. Is this true?”

Oscar and Felipe shoot Coco identical sympathetic glances over Héctor’s shoulder. When he turns back to glare at them, they unsuccessfully attempt to wipe their faces clean.

“I asked you a question, mija.”

“I…I mean…we only stayed for a…”

Héctor turns around and asks the twins to give him a moment alone with his daughter. They walk away, leaving the two Riveras alone in the living room.

The clock on the wall ticks. Coco shuffles her feet. She looks at her Papá, realizing for the first time that in her small heels she’s eye-level with him. Also for the first time, he seems to be at a complete loss for words.

“How could you _do_ this?”

The sadness in his voice is what stings her, even more so than the disappointment.

“We weren’t making music!” Coco protests feebly. “Only dancing!”

“You were thoroughly enjoying the entertainment of a live mariachi band. In public, Coco!”

“Lo siento, Papá. I shouldn't have lied to you."

“I thought you knew better! I thought you of all people understood how important it is!” His voice begins to shake. “What if she had been there, huh? What if she had seen you? Do you want her to come back to us or not?”

Coco's lip stops trembling.

 _That’s_ what this is about? All this time, you’ve been afraid that if you sing or play music you’re never going to see Mamá again?”

“Of course! Music is what drove her away, and I’m not going to let that happen again! Coco, you were _there._ You _know_ this."

“But that was thirteen years ago! And ever since then, all you have done is beg her to come home in every way that you possibly could. Remember when you had to borrow money from Tio Oscar and Tio Felipe to pay the mortgage because you spent too much running “lost wife” ads in _El Universal?_ And all those times that you knocked on Abuelo Solis’s door to ask if he’d heard from her, even though you knew that he was going to scream and pelt beer bottles at you? And the _hundreds_ of hours that you've put into looking for her? Because I do. And if she's..." _Alive._ "...in Mexico, she couldn't possibly _not_ have heard how much we want her to come back. Your music may be the reason why Mamá left us, but staying away for all these years was _her choice._ It’s not your fault, Papá.”

Coco inches closer to her father. His gaze is fixed on her, his expression unreadable.

“And even when she left, it wasn’t because she hated music. It was because you were gone. She never hated music, she loved it! Don’t you remember when you would play, and she would sing, and it was as if nothing else mattered? Don’t you _miss_ that feeling? Because that’s what dancing with Julio is like for me. Just because we lost Mamá doesn’t mean we should have to lose music, too!”

Without another word, Héctor shuffles out of the room. Coco follows behind him, and is surprised to see that he's retrieving a ladder. He pulls open the door to the attic, climbs up, and climbs back down with an old brown guitar case in his hand. He brings it to their sofa and sits down.

Coco watches intently as Héctor extracts his old, beautiful instrument. Then he cradles it in his arms for a moment, like he’s holding a baby.

He lifts a trembling hand and gently begins to strum. A familiar tune, but much softer and slower than it was before.

“You make me un poco loco..." he sings. "Un poquititito loco. The way you keep me guessing…your vanishing perplexing...now I find myself confessing...that I'm just…un poco...”

He stops there, letting the remaining lyrics die on his lips. Coco comes and sits by him. She wraps her arm around him and leans into his shoulder, silent tears falling down both of their cheeks.

“She’s not coming home, is she mi corazon?”

She doesn’t respond. Neither one of them has an answer for the other that they themselves are ready to hear.

**A/N: Thank you to everyone who's been kind enough to review so far! It’s nice to know that there are always a few active people in the Coco fandom, even now that the movie has been out for a few years and we haven’t gotten a whole lot of new content (official content anyway).**

**I feel like Coco and Héctor must have a very different relationship in this verse than Coco and Imelda had in canon. Héctor isn’t nearly as strict as Imelda, and plus he blames himself for “driving her away,” so Coco probably got away with a _lot_ more when she was a kid. Eating sweets and running through the house and such. The one non-hazardous thing that Héctor is really firm about is the music ban, but because they have a more relaxed relationship overall Coco stands up to him in a manner that she never would have stood up to Imelda.**

**Thanks for reading. You can feel free to message me here or on tumblr at hellhathnofurylikeImeldascorned. I'd be happy to check out your Coco fanart/vids/fics.**


	5. 1941

After Héctor and Coco’s conversation about music, things changed in the Rivera house. Performing music for money is still banned, but the guitar, sheet music, and trumpets came out of the attic. The instruments were cleaned and tuned. Coco bought Héctor a new songbook, in which he copied down all the songs he wrote for his wife and daughter, then began to write new ones. A tear-jerking coming of age song about Coco, a hilarious ballad inspired by Pepita called “She who chases invisible mice,” and a mournful lament about his fruitless search for Imelda that he only plays and sings when he’s alone.

Sometimes, Oscar and Felipe jam with Héctor on their trumpets. If Coco is around, she joins in by dancing or singing. As it turns out, she has a beautiful voice, a full octave higher in pitch than Imelda’s but just as powerful.

In addition, Coco and Julio still go out dancing at least two nights a week. They return early one evening and find Héctor in the courtyard with his guitar and his songbook, fine-tuning a new ditty about growing older.

Julio clears his throat. “Hola, Don Héctor. May I… _we_ …have a moment of your time?”

Héctor takes one look at the wide, anxious grins on the two faces before him and instantly flashes back to the day that Imelda brought him home to _her_ Papá for this conversation. Himself a scrawny teenage mariachi with no family and no money, his future father-in-law a beefcake with a reputation for disfiguring men over the last beer in the house. Thank god they’d been able to ply him with tequila.

“Have a seat,” Héctor slides over to one end of the bench. The two youngsters are so nervous that it takes them thirty seconds to decide which of them is going to sit where. Julio ends up between Héctor and Coco, then immediately launches into an impassioned speech about how skilled he is at making furniture, how careful he is with money, and what he plans to do with the shop once he inherits it.

“I have millions of ideas, Don Héctor. Coco has heard all about them. I have plans for a six-piece dining set that would be worth hundreds all by itself.”

“That’s very nice,” says Héctor. “But there’s only one thing I need to know.”

“Si?”

“Are you going to leave my daughter?”

“Of course not!” Julio answers quickly. “Marriage vows are for a lifetime, and I want to make those vows to Coco because I love her. I would never, ever break them.”

“What if you’re asked to travel for work? What if someone you trust promises you that you could make thousands of dollars a night, if you were willing to spend eight or nine months of the year out on the road, away from her?”

Julio looks surprised by the question, but he shakes his head all the same.

“I suppose once my Papá is too old to do the supply run to Tijuana, I’ll have to leave for one week every spring and fall. But I wouldn’t want to be apart from Coco for any longer than that, no. I can promise you, I’ll be able to provide for her very well right here in Santa Cecilia. Nothing will ever come ahead of her, Don Héctor, not for me.”

Julio sucks in his breath, clearly hoping he hasn’t given the wrong response.

Héctor stands to his feet, and the two youngsters follow suit.

“Julio, listen to me very carefully. I don’t want you to call me Don Héctor ever again.”

“Lo siento, Señor Rivera.”

“No. I want you to call me _Papá_ Héctor.”

For a moment, Héctor thinks that the boy is going to leap forward and tackle him, but Julio settles for a vigorous handshake and about fifty, “Oh, Gracias, Papá Héctor’s” instead. Coco shows no such restraint, squealing and hugging him with all her might until he warns her she’s about to crush him.

Now that they have Héctor’s permission to get married, Julio and Coco waste no time in announcing their engagement to everyone in Santa Cecilia. For several days, the shop is abuzz with excitement. Señor and Señora Lopez are ecstatic about officially welcoming Héctor and Coco to the family, and throughout the day, they all chatter excitedly about wedding plans. Friends and neighbors come to the store just to congratulate everyone, and many offer contributions to the wedding. Flowers, rings, a mariachi band, a barrel of homemade sangria, several dozen potluck dishes, and from Rosita, all of the pastries and desserts they could possibly want. Señor Lopez tells Héctor that he wants to divide the expenses 50/50, and Señora Lopez offers to give Coco her own wedding dress.

Before he must start saving all of his money for the wedding, Héctor decides to print an engagement announcement in several papers. This results in a few congratulatory letters from distant cousins, and from the editors of papers who have heard from him dozens of times and are happy to hear that his family is finally growing.

* * *

Imelda feels it the moment it happens. Her Papá, who thinks of her relatively often (though always with a side of contempt), suddenly vanishes from the collection of people who have been sustaining her memories. At first, she wonders if maybe he drank himself into such a stupor that he's lost his mind altogether. But a little while later, a songbird-sized rainbow-colored alibrije flies through her door with a note. It has a seal on it from the department of family reunions.

Imelda closes up the shop early and takes the nearest tram down to the government building nearest to where the marigold bridge to Santa Cecilia appears on dia de muertos. Sure enough, there he is, finishing up his paperwork. When she gets close, she looks over his shoulder and sees that he’s listing off his living relatives: Oscar, Filipe, his uncle in Xaltipa, their cousins who work at the iron factory in the city…and Imelda herself.

“Papá?”

The man shakes with a start and leaps out of his chair, as if he’s seen a ghost.

“I…Imelda?” He looks her up and down. “When the hell did you die?”

“December 14th, 1921.”

Her Papá’s eyes widen. Then he lets out a long, boisterous laugh.

“You’re serious? All this time that your wimp of a husband has been demanding to know where you ran off to, you've been _dead?”_

Imelda’s heart leaps.

“He’s looking for me? He…he doesn’t hate me? He’s only mad because he thinks I left?”

“Ay, mija, of course he hates you. Who wouldn’t hate a wife that just disappeared? He’s probably looking for you because he wants to give you a piece of his mind.” Imelda’s father folds his smooth ivory arms over his chest. “I wouldn’t count on ever seeing him again if I were you. I mean, I’m sure he’ll get here one of these days, but he’s not going to want anything to do with you when he does. And that kid of yours has probably forgotten you anyway.”

Imelda bites back her rage long enough to ask, “How are Oscar and Felipe?”

The man darkens. “Wouldn’t know. They stayed at the house with the wimp.”

“Good,” Imelda breathes, at the same time as she removes her chancla from her left foot and slaps her Papá so hard his freshly minted skull pops right off. A few security guards have come over to check what’s going on, but Imelda is already on her way out the door.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the land of the living, the owner of a local tavern knocks on the door to Héctor’s house and delivers the news that his father-in-law has been found dead in the alley. Héctor, Oscar, and Felipe dutifully plan a small funeral service, set up a payment plan for a grave plot, and go through the dearly departed’s home and possessions.

“This was our mother’s,” Oscar holds up a dainty music box. “It was her favorite thing.”

Héctor opens it up. There’s nothing inside but a handful of hairpins covered in dust. The paint on the outside of it is also caked in dust, and faded, but it still has some of its original sparkle.

“I’ll take this for Coco,” Héctor puts the item in a small crate that has been designated “things to keep,” which has nothing else in it so far. Mainly because almost everything in the house is trash. Empty beer barrels, plates that are dirty or broken or both, and disgustingly ratty clothes and bedclothes can be found everywhere, And that’s nothing to say of the toxic waste dump that Oscar, Felipe, and Imelda’s childhood bedrooms have been turned into.

“It’s funny,” Felipe says, as he picks up a moldy banana peel and tosses it in the general direction of a pile of avocado pits and soup bones that Oscar is collecting. “I haven’t been in here in twenty years, and I remember this place as being…

“Nice and cozy,” Oscar fills in.

“And inhabitable.”

They don’t finish the thought, but Héctor knows how it ends anyway. _Imelda_ was the one who kept them from living in squalor after her mother died. _She_ was the one who cooked and cleaned for five years and looked after the boys from the time they were six years old.

“I wonder how long it took for this place to fall apart,” Oscar ponders.

“After we all moved out?”

“Yeah.”

The two boys look over at Héctor, who is perusing a bookshelf for books that aren’t destroyed

“Papá Héctor?” Filipe says. The man looks up at him. “Thank you.”

Héctor smiles in spite of himself. “For what?”

Oscar steps over to his twin. “For not kicking us out when Imelda left.”

“Of course! You’re family.” Héctor tosses a book that smells like moldy mango juice in the general direction of the rotten fruit pile. “You know, at the time, you weren’t that much older then than I was when my parents died. Only I didn’t have any family, so my best friend Ernesto came to live with me at the house.”

Felipe and Oscar exchange a smirk.

“What?”

“No offense, Papá Héctor, but you weren’t very good at picking out best friends when you were a boy.”

“After everything you did for that man, he just...left with his guitar and never returned.”

“Not even a letter.”

“Or a card.”

“Or a note.”

“Ay, well, I wasn’t very good at a lot of things back then.” Héctor tosses another book, one that’s only stained on the corner, into a box of things that might have a prayer of being repurposed as something other than compost.

“You were a good musician.”

“Still are. Much better than Ernesto ever was.

“You could get back out there, you know.”

Héctor shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”

“We’ll bet that you could make as much money as Ernesto de la Cruz.”

“He could probably even help you get started. He owes you a favor, doesn’t he?”

“Absolutely not,” Héctor says again, more forcefully this time. “I promised I wouldn’t.”

And the subject is closed, although everyone involved is aware that there’s no one holding Héctor to his promise besides himself.

* * *

“Señor de la Cruz!” Three taps sound on a closed door. “Your mail is here!”

A few moments later, the door swings open. His pajama top is unbuttoned, exposing the rippling muscles of his chest, but his hair is gelled and styled, and his charming grin omnipresent.

“Lovely as always, Carmelita,” he says to his assistant housekeeper.

“Dashing as always, Señor,” she says coyly as she hands him a stack of letters. “Will I see you tonight?”

“8:00, don’t be a moment late!” he winks before shutting the door to the bedroom. He glances over at his four poster canopy bed, where his assistant press secretary is fast asleep, naked beneath a red satin sheet. Ernesto sits down at his oak desk and begins to quickly flip through the thin stack of paper he’s just been brought.

His secretaries have been tasked with paying his bills, booking his engagements, and tallying up and answering his fanmail. The only letters he cares about are personal correspondence, which mostly comes from his eleven one-and-only girlfriends, who are scattered throughout the country. The only newspaper articles he has asked to be brought are the ones that feature him, and the ones that mention his hometown. The latter is just a precaution, as is the speech he’s been rehearsing for years discrediting Héctor. “He was my best friend…and then I took him in…taught him everything he knows…hasn’t been the same since his wife left…I assumed that he knew that if he ever needed money he could just ask…to be betrayed in this way, by him…I never expected this…”

So far, the only mentions of Santa Cecilia in any newspaper worth Ernesto’s time have been in bios of him. So he is very surprised when he sees the name of the town written in pen across the top of the announcements section of a paper. He excitedly flips straight to the obituaries page, but he doesn’t see anyone he knows there.

Instead, a blurb in the engagement section has been circled.

“Soccoro Filipa-Oskara Rivera, daughter of Héctor Ezekiel Rivera and Imelda Victoria Solis Rivera, and Julio Lopez, son of Luis Rosario Lopez and Ximena Julia Santiago Lopez, are engaged to be married. Their wedding will take place in Santa Cecilia on February 18th, 1943.”

So…little Coco is getting married. Unless there’s something Ernesto doesn’t know about-a new woman perhaps-this new change in Héctor’s life means that he will have nothing holding him back. That could lead Héctor to make some changes of his own. Such as going back into singing and performing…writing music…maybe even asking for his old songs back…

Erensto checks the date of the wedding again. The good news is, it's not for over a year. But maybe sometime between now and then, he ought to pay his old friend a visit. Just to set things straight.

* * *

Most hours of most days, he’s able to put her out of his mind. He has other things to focus on, work, friends, family, and life. To Héctor, this is both a relief and a shame.

He clings to the assurances from those he loves that unless Imelda’s hurt (or…worse) she must know she has the option to come back. And she also must have gotten wind of Coco and Julio’s engagement by now. Everyone else has.

Héctor remembers how difficult it was for Imelda to get married without her own Mamá there. How she would put a brave face on while her aunts and older cousins helped her mend and sew her dress. Then when everyone else left, the mask would slip a little. “She should be here,” she would say. “She was supposed to be here.”

And now, Imelda is putting Coco through the _exact same thing._

Héctor is angry with himself for the thought. It’s my fault, not hers. I’m the one who drove her away.

A little voice whispers back to him, you drove her away, yes. But Coco did not.

He still does his research, though it’s not nearly as thorough as it used to be. He spends no more than three hours a week, doesn’t save nearly as many articles as he used to save, and only writes to hospitals, prisons, convents, and morgues.

And then there are the days when the distance between them feels like a moment. Like Héctor could round a corner or look up from his workbench, and there she’d be, shaking her head and reminding him to comb his hair and pick up the flour. Although time has peppered Héctor’s beard with grey hairs and printed tracks across his cheeks, he can never picture that happening to her. In his imagination, Imelda is still the twenty-two-year-old woman he kissed goodbye at his front door. The one he promised he would come home to.

He had never asked her to promise she would be there when he got back. He didn’t think he needed to.


	6. 1942

As she has done twenty times, Imelda lights a candle that sets atop a teeny tiny Christmas tree in the window of her bedroom. It’s just big enough to hold five ornaments, one gold, one purple, one tiny and pink, and two medium-sized and silver. She says a silent prayer of thanks for the fact that her family is still alive, and asks that they be watched over.

She’d like to think she knows what they might be doing back in the land of the living. But the truth is, she can’t even begin to fathom what they’re _like_ anymore. Her brothers, creeping up on forty, might be the same clowns they’ve always been, or they might not. Coco might still like kittens and the color pink, she might hate them. Héctor…god knows how her absence has changed him.

It’s not Imelda’s fault that she was murdered. But it _is_ entirely her fault that all she has to sustain her are hurt and confusion. If she hadn’t snapped at her family, if she hadn’t told them she was disappointed in them…then they wouldn’t think that she left them.

Every year, she makes the same Christmas wish that will never come true-that she could hold them in her arms, and tell her baby girl that it’s okay to sing and dance and tell her brothers to never change and tell her husband that he means the world to her and that she would have waited for him to come home forever.

* * *

Four days later, residents of the land of the living wake up to find that a full inch of snow has blanketed the sand overnight. For people who have spent their whole lives in towns such as Santa Cecilia, where temperatures haven’t sunk low enough for snow to occur at all in several decades, this is nothing short of a natural catastrophe. Before they’ve even had time to contemplate what to do with themselves, Oscar and Felipe receive a call on the newly-acquired house phone telling them that they are not to risk coming to work under current conditions. Héctor ultimately decides that he’ll be making the trek to the furniture store, just to make sure that everyone is all right, but that he wants Coco to stay home with her uncles.

Héctor discovers that the Lopez’s are safe in their home, but they’ve decided not to open the store today because it is unlikely that people will come out in the treacherous weather anyhow. As long as he’s made the trip, Héctor decides he might as well stay and work on some orders.

“Is Coco alright?” Rosita asks when she comes down to do some cleaning.

“She’s fine,” Héctor says, as he fits the leg of a new coffee table into its correct place and begins hammering. “She won’t be in today, though.”

“Oh,” Rosita sighs. “I was supposed to show her how to make pink chocolate sopapillas.”

“I’m sure she’ll enjoy that.” Then Héctor can’t help but ask, “However would you make them pink?”

Rosita beams. “A very specific combination of tomato and strawberry juice!”

Rosita Lopez has always been a little offbeat. She dyes her clothes bright neon shades that no one else wears, reads novels that no one else has heard of, and makes so many desserts that she ends up giving half of them away. A few folks started making snide remarks about her marital status (or rather, lack thereof) when her little brother got engaged to Coco last year. To that, Rosita simply replied, “Why would I want to get married when I could bake cake?”

Héctor is proud to call her family.

“Huh, looks like the snow is melted,” Rosita says from over by the window. “The ground just looks wet now, and…” she frowns, “There’s a whole crowd of people coming over from the plaza.”

Héctor quirks an eyebrow. He isn’t aware of any events going on in town, nor can he imagine what could possibly be bringing people out on a day like this.

Rosita gets to organizing the workshop cabinets, Héctor continues hammering away at his coffee table, and the commotion outside rapidly grows louder until they can hear it from inside the shop.

“Dios mio, can you believe…”

“It’s him! It’s really him!”

“It’s this way! It’s this way! Follow me!”

“I know a shortcut!”

“It’s right here!”

“Oh, can I get the door for you, Senor?”

“There’s no need.”

The hammer in Héctor’s hand clatters to the floor.

He would recognize _that_ voice anywhere.

The little bell above the door to the shop rings, and there he is, filling every inch of the doorframe with gleam and glimmer and mariachi glory. He turns back to the people outside and tips his emerald green golden-tasseled sombrero.

“Gracias, good Señoritas y Señores! Don’t forget, I will be in the plaza at half-past seven tonight signing autographs. Tell your friends. And don’t forget to…”

“Seize your moment!” echoes the crowd.

Ernesto pushes the door shut and crosses the shop, gold dust flaking from his boots. He flashes a grin at Rosita, who is standing straight as a scarecrow with her mouth agape, then approaches Héctor’s workbench with a sheepish grin.

“A moment of your time, old friend?”

* * *

Héctor and Ernesto step out the back of the shop in an attempt to evade the masses, which is particularly difficult because Ernesto’s bright green and gold ensemble makes him stick out like a leprechaun in winter. Héctor, in his plain overcoat, trousers, and leather shoes, looks and feels frumpy in comparison.

“What is that you want?” Héctor asks.

“Can we go somewhere quiet? Like, say, the old barn at the end of Calle Bernardo where we had our first concert?”

“Sure,” Héctor says, surprised. “You remember that?”

Ernesto puffs out his chest like a peacock. “A mariachi _never_ forgets his stage debut!”

Héctor unsuccessfully tries to suppress a grin. “We were ten and thirteen…no one was there but our parents.”

“And my primo Urbano and his nasty friends,” Ernesto nudges Héctor. “Remember when they tried to jump us later?”

“Yeah…they went for me first. You beat the filling out of ‘em.”

“Damn right, I did. I think Urbano still has the scar.”

Héctor had only agreed to talk to Ernesto at all because he was curious to hear what the guy could possibly have to say for himself after twenty years of radio silence. But the longer they’re together, the harder Héctor finds it to stay mad at his old friend. Within less than an hour, they’re up on the stage re-enacting their childhood concert, complete with broken off wooden planks as guitars.

“Well everyone knows Juanita!” Ernesto sings, dramatically strumming invisible strings. “Her eyes the color of mud!”

Héctor smacks his forehead with his free hand. “Oh god, not the first draft!”

“Arms like a spider, a nose like a beagle, and her…”

“Buttocks they drag on the floor. Her hair is like a crow’s nest!”

“She doesn’t know how to dance!”

“And if we weren’t so ugly…”

“Juanita might give us a chance!”

A short while later, Héctor and Ernesto find themselves flopped out on a giant pile of straw, howling with laughter, exhausted from pretending to be young again.

“I’ll admit, I was afraid you would be angry with me,” Ernesto confesses. “When you never answered my letter, I thought that was it.”

“You wrote me a letter? After you went back out on tour? I never got any letter!”

“Of course I wrote you a letter!” Ernesto exclaims. “You’re my best friend! I wasn’t going to forget about you just because you decided to stay here and wait for Imelda.”

Héctor is visibly startled by the mention of his wife. Most people don’t bring her up anymore, at least not by name.

“Did she ever come back?” Héctor shakes his head. “I’m sorry, amigo. I guess in a way it’s my fault. If we had never left, _she_ wouldn’t have left.”

“I’m responsible for my actions,” Héctor says firmly. “Not you.”

“Any hard feelings about…me using the songs you wrote?”

“No, of course not. I gave them to you. I expected you to put your name on them.”

A wide, content smile spreads across Ernesto’s face.

“I owe you a great debt, amigo. Not financially, of course, as you’ve said, you gave me the songs. But you’re part of the reason I was able to achieve my dream. And for that, I will always be grateful.”

Coming from anyone else, that might sound insincere. Especially since Ernesto is practically grimacing. But Héctor knows how painful it is for his old friend to admit that someone else has contributed to his success.

“I’m happy for you. Truly, I am.”

“I’m happy for you, too. Your daughter is getting married, you’re getting a new son-in-law. Maybe in a few years, you’ll be an abuelo.”

Héctor grins. “I’ll always be younger than you, amigo.”

Ernesto playfully punches him.

“I have made a decision,” Ernesto announces. “I’m going to come back to Santa Cecilia for Coco’s wedding. And then after that, you’re coming to Mexico City to live with me!” Héctor chuckles. “I mean it. You’re going to be my full-time ghostwriter! You’ll write songs for me, I’ll perform them.”

The shiny grin on Ernesto’s face doesn’t falter.

“You’re serious?” Héctor says.

“Of course I am! Héctor, you’re going to love it! No one will know what you do, of course, per your contract, but you’ll be living in the very lap of luxury! You’ll be a permanent guest at my mansion, have your own wing, your own servants, your own car, all the women you desire and on top of that, you’ll make thousands a year…”

“No,” Héctor says flatly.

“All right, all right. Tens of thousands!”

“Ernesto, I’m done with music. And I’m not leaving my home in Santa Cecilia. Not ever.”

Ernesto is trying to hide it, but he looks genuinely crushed.

“This is the whole reason why you’re here, isn’t it?” says Héctor, standing up from the pile of hay, too abruptly for his forty-two-year-old bones but he doesn’t care. “Because you’ve run out of songs.”

“I just…Héctor…”

_I could kill him._

“I don’t get it. Why don’t you just hire someone to work with you on your music?”

“Ernesto de la Cruz doesn’t share credit!” Ernesto blurts out.

“Ay! There it is.”

_It would be so easy. There’s no one around, and no one knows we’re here. My hands around his neck. Six feet of dirt in this old abandoned building that’s going to collapse at any moment…_

_Except that everyone in town adores him. No one would believe that he just wandered away, not now. There’d be a search party. There would be a whole investigation, who did it and why. It would be a mess. And the last thing I would ever do is make a mess._

“Wait, how about this,” Ernesto continues, getting up to follow Héctor. “You stay in Santa Cecilia, and every few months I come to visit and buy some songs from you?”

“I told you, no music,” Héctor snaps. “It’s not going to happen. Why don’t you stop clinging to the past?”

“Oh, so _I’m_ clinging to the past?” Ernesto snaps. “Don’t be ridiculous, Héctor. We both know that the only reason you could possibly have for turning down my offer is because of your undying devotion to a woman who clearly wants nothing to do with you.”

An anger that no one-not even Ernesto-has ever seen flashes across Héctor’s face.

“Enjoy the rest of your visit,” Héctor says curtly. “Don’t ever bother coming to see me again.”

* * *

When Héctor arrives at home, he finds his family frantically searching under beds and in closets while shaking tiny silver bells. Coco explains to him that none of them have seen Pepita since last night. Héctor immediately puts his things away and joins them, and they comb through every nook and cranny of the house and the courtyard three times, and there’s no sign of the cat anywhere. Not even a pawprint.

“I’m going outside,” Héctor finally says around dinnertime.

“Let’s have something to eat first. We can look after.”

“No, mija,” Héctor grabs a lantern. “You go have dinner. I’m not stopping until I find her.”

The uncharacteristic determination on his face puts Coco off from pushing him any further. But an hour later, she grabs his coat, a few warm rolls, and a thermos and set out to find him. He’s half a mile down the road, searching a neighbor’s field.

“Gracias, mi corazon,” he pulls his coat on over his work shirt. “Go get some sleep. Tell your tios to lock up the house.”

“Please come inside, Papá,” she begs. “You can’t stay outside all night, it’s below freezing! It might even snow again!”

“All the more reason to keep looking. As soon as I’ve found her, I’ll come home. With any luck, Pepita and I will both be asleep in bed by the time you wake up.”

Héctor manages a smile through chattering teeth, but Coco isn’t convinced.

“I’m worried about her too. But Pepita is twenty years old. Maybe…maybe she stepped out for a reason.”

“That’s enough!” Héctor snaps. “Get inside and go to bed! That’s an order.”

Stunned by his forceful tone, Coco complies. But she spends the whole night tossing and turning and peeking out her window and into his room to see if he’s come back yet. At six a.m., she finally hears a sound coming from the front of the house and rushes to the door in her nightgown. She finds Héctor slumped over at the kitchen table, looking as though he’s aged ten years in as many hours. Coco quickly shuts door behind him and moves to help him get out of his now-damp coat.

“I failed.” His voice is thick and hollow. “I couldn’t find her anywhere.”

“It’s not your fault,” Coco says soothingly. “I don’t think she wanted to be found.”

“But I didn’t even know she was leaving. If I had I would have begged her not to go.”

“I know, Papá. I know.”

Before he can respond, Héctor doubles over with a coughing fit fierce enough to shake his entire body and the chair he’s sitting on. Coco makes a hot cup of tea, forces him into Tio Oscar’s spare jacket, and gets started on breakfast. Héctor eats, drinks, and, in spite of a barrage of protesting from Coco _and_ the twins, leaves for work. Coco rushes to get herself ready so she can accompany him and finds herself braiding her hair as she walks.

“Papá, slow down!” Coco whispers. “I can’t keep up with you!”

“I thought you were taking the morning off to work on the dress,” Héctor says.

“Mamá Lopez has my dress at the shop,” Coco reminds him, concerned that he doesn’t remember this information that’s held true for many months. “I _always_ come in with you.”

Héctor doesn’t speak for the rest of the walk, although he does almost go down the wrong road twice. Once Coco tries to trick him into walking back home, but he catches on.

Once they reach the shop, Señor Lopez takes one look at Héctor and orders him to go home and go to bed. A short argument follows, not at all helped by Coco clarifying that Héctor was awake and outside the entire night. In the end, it’s agreed that if Héctor takes a two-hour nap on the couch in the stockroom, then he can work the rest of the day. He lies down but refuses to get under the thick woven blanket, wondering how anyone could stand to sleep under that thing in this heat.

* * *

“Papá?”

He opens his eyes. There’s Coco with another cup of tea in her hand. After pulling himself out of another coughing fit, he drinks it.

“It’s time to go home,” says Coco gently.

“No it’s not…need to get to work.”

“But the shop is closed.”

It’s only after Héctor staggers out of the stockroom and sees how dark it is outside that he realizes he has slept the entire day. And somehow, he actually feels more tired than he did when it started. He’s too weak to protest when Coco wraps one arm around him and begins leading him straight back to the house.

“Careful, Papá,” Coco half-catches him as he trips over a rock. “We’ll be home soon.”

“Excuse me, senorita. May I assist you?”

Coco turns in the direction of the voice and stops in her tracks so quickly that Héctor almost trips again.

“You...ay…ahem…um… _Ernesto de la Cruz?”_

“In the flesh.” Even in his stupor, Héctor can hear the smug smile on Ernesto’s face. “What’s going on? Is that…Héctor?”

“Si!” Coco’s eyes widen in amazement. “He’s…well...ill…we’re just um…home…on our way…”

“Allow me.”

In one swift movement, Ernesto de la Cruz hoists Héctor over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Héctor starts coughing again, and Coco scrambles to make sure that he’s secure in the celebrity’s arms. She walks a step behind Ernesto the whole way home, partly to watch out for her Papá and partly because she’s embarrassed by her complete inability to speak like a normal human being in front of-she still can’t believe it-Ernesto de la Cruz! Who’s _here in Santa Cecilia!_ And knows her Papá by name!

Oscar and Filipe, who are waiting at the door when they arrive, are also shocked to see Ernesto, but they’re too concerned about Héctor to ask many questions. They hover in the doorway of the bedroom while the big mariachi helps Héctor change into his pajamas and get into bed. He tucks him in tightly under the blankets.

“I’ll be back tomorrow to check on him. It was nice to see you, Coco,” Ernesto flashes a smile in the direction of the young girl, who’s further astounded by the fact that he knows _her_ name, too.

As soon as they leave him, Héctor kicks off all the blankets, tears off his pajama top, and falls asleep only under a thin sheet.

* * *

The next day is one of the most bizarre of Héctor’s life. Or maybe it’s several days, he’s not sure. Nothing makes sense.

He keeps going back and forth between feeling way too hot or way too cold. He’s both sweating and shivering. There’s not enough air. People who look and sound fuzzy keep coming up to him and forcing him to swallow liquids he can barely taste, wiping his face with cloths, and touching his forehead.

At one point, someone comes in and prods him a bit with different pieces of cold metal. After that, Héctor finds himself waking up with ice and wet rags on parts of his body, and being forced to swallow mouthfuls of something disgusting.

When he‘s able to scrape together the strength to talk, he says, “No more ice,” but if those around him understand him, they don’t comply. He can’t understand them, either. All he can make out are various soothing tones and a woman’s occasional sobs.

Sometimes, the only light in the room comes from a lantern on a shelf. It illuminates three faces on a photograph, one still and sweet, one crooked with a smile, and one stoic and beautiful.

Using every ounce of strength he possesses, He sits up to get a closer look at the third face. When he squints, he can clearly see all the features that in his opinion make up the most perfect woman god ever created.

“Melda?” he mumbles. “Where are you?”

Héctor hears a voice, but it’s deep and obviously male. He rolls over and closes his eyes, praying that she’ll be there when he wakes up.

* * *

Anytime the others are around, Ernesto is a wreck.

“So many years I thought he was angry with me, and he thought I was avoiding him…so many years, wasted...and now..."

Every single one of them responds with kindness and comfort. As well they should. Who would any of them be to question the great Ernesto de la Cruz?

Anytime he is alone, his heart is light. Everything is finally falling into place.

Compared to all the work it took to get rid of Imelda, sitting vigil at Héctor’s bedside and forgetting to administer spoonfuls of cough syrup and fever reducer is easy as pie.


	7. 1943 Part 1

Ernesto’s plan would be working a lot faster if Coco didn’t insist on spending every waking moment in Héctor’s room-and staying awake as much as humanly possible, at that. Ernesto is grateful for Coco’s fiancé, Julio, who is the only person who can convince her to take breaks to eat and sleep. Anytime Coco leaves the room, Ernesto goes in, saying that he doesn’t want Héctor to be alone or Coco to have to worry. When Coco is asleep, Julio, Oscar, Felipe, and the odd chubby girl who cooks a lot still pop in on Héctor quite often, but it’s easy enough for Ernesto to convince them that he just gave Héctor his meds or just changed the ice bag. Every so often, Ernesto sticks a thermometer in Héctor’s mouth to make sure that he is still sick.

When Coco is with Héctor, Ernesto sleeps on the couch and makes polite conversation. Oscar and Felipe have seen enough of him not to be star struck, but the others have not, and they find his tall tales a welcome distraction. He tells them he wrote and produced most of his own movies and convinces them that the main character in Casablanca was loosely based on him.

After three more days, Coco comes out of Héctor’s room and plunks herself down between Julio and one of the twins, weeping and babbling about how she doesn’t want to be an orphan. Ernesto rushes into the bedroom. He’s expecting the worst, but his hopes are quickly dashed. The man is just resting, and his temperature has even gone _down_ a little. Still 40 Celsius, not exactly out of the woods yet, Ernesto reminds himself. He takes the opportunity to change Héctor’s fresh ice bag for a melted one.

Hector begins to moan.

“Shh,” Ernesto croons. “You’re not well. I’m just trying to help you.”

“Imelda...”

“She’s not here.”

Héctor's wide, mad, eyes search the room.

“Melda…Mel…Mella…Imella...Melda...”

Coco stays away for a while. Eats, takes a nap, drinks some water. By the time she ambles into the room, still wearing her nightdress, and announces that she's ready to take back over, Héctor has fallen asleep and Ernesto has brought his fever back up to 41.

“It’s getting worse,” Ernesto warns Coco, in the gentlest voice he can muster. “I think he’s seeing things.”

He turns away from her to hide a smile.

* * *

The whole world is shapes and light and cold….shivering…cold and bright…bright light from the window…

“Imel...Mella…Ellima…ma...”

Shape moves…closer…white nightdress…short cuff sleeves…he’s seen it before…

“Imeldila…Immella…Ella…Imelda…”

Young woman…fawn brown skin, smoother than soap…slender frame…black hair down her back, long and loose…..

Stepping closer…speaking to him…red-rimmed hickory brown eyes…soothing voice…hand on his shoulder…sweet gentle touch….

A shallow, delighted gasp escapes his lips.

“Immadla…Imelda!”

She cries. He does too.

At long last, his love is back by his side.

He is whole again.

* * *

It happens much more suddenly than this sort of thing ever should. In one burst of light, like a flame igniting, his memories of her gain a strength that she’d forgotten they ever had, and a tone that they have never had. Resentment becomes relief, longing becomes comfort, and hurt becomes pure, unimpeded love.

It’s all Imelda has ever hoped for in death, and yet she’s sure that this means something is terribly, horribly wrong.

She’s as helpless as ever, so she takes her frustration out on her sewing materials, squeezing and piercing and tearing and punching the leather into a pattern that suits her and starting all over again.

“Excuse me, Señorita? Are you ever going to ask me what I need done with my boots?”

Imelda looks up with a start. She hadn’t even heard the customer come into the store.

“Señora,” Imelda corrects him, standing up and dropping a bin full of cork in the process. “So sorry…I just…”

“Should I come back another time?”

“No. It’s fine. How can I help you?”

The elderly, brown-tinged skeleton grunts, plunking his shoes down on the counter. “Need ‘em repaired. Was wondering if you’d consider offering some kinda payment plan. ‘M afraid I don’t got much on me at the moment.”

Imelda looks the skeleton up and down. His bones are brittle and frail, his clothing torn. She can tell at a glance that he lives in Shantytown. She’s passed through there only once, when she took a wrong turn, and still has occasional nightmares about it being her retirement home.

“Don’t you worry,” he assures her. “I’ll be around plenty long enough to pay my debts.”

Imelda isn’t entirely sure she believes that, but she takes the shoes anyway.

“So, ‘Ernesto de la Cruz is a fraud,’ huh?” The man gestures to Imelda’s sign. “Good taste. Personally, I think the lyrics to his songs are all right, but then he bastardizes them with all that shiny big city crap.”

“What shiny crap?” Imelda can’t help but asking. The stranger goes off on a rant about glittery sets and backup singers and backup dancers and dramatized vocal arrangements. From there, Imelda ends up talking about Héctor and the love and care that he poured into every piece he ever wrote, and without going into too much detail, says she has reason to be concerned for his welfare at the moment.

“I’ll tell you what, Señora Rivera,” the man reaches into his coat and pulls out a thin bag. “Take this. Make yourself a cup of tea with it.”

Imelda examines the teabag. It has three kinds of flowers in it, among them finely-crushed marigold petals. In a certain light, she swears that the petals shimmer in a most unnatural way.

“What will this do?” she asks.

“Not too sure myself…a friend who vanished gave it to me. Said something about it helping us see the other side more clearly.”

“Are you sure you want to give me this?”

“That I am,” he says. “I have no use for it."

“Muchos gracias, Señor…”

The stranger tips his hat. “Chichirron.”

Imelda quickly finishes up the shoes and tells Chichirron that he owes her no payment. Out he walks, on the best, sturdiest soles that crushed petals can buy.

* * *

Once it gets dark, Rosita decides that she must go home to check on her parents. Julio offers to walk her and promises Coco that he will be right back. Both Lopez’s give Coco big warm hugs and tell everyone to keep an eye on her as well as Héctor.

That leaves Ernesto alone in the living room with Oscar and Felipe, who are perhaps the quietest they’ve ever been.

“Why don’t you boys get some rest?” Ernesto suggests. “You haven’t slept all day. I’ll wait up with Coco until Julio gets back.”

The twins look at each other and wordlessly traipse off to bed.

Ernesto stands up.

It’s time to seize his moment.

In the dim glow of the lamp, Ernesto sees Coco perched on the edge of the rickety brown chair that now lives in the master bedroom. She’s gently feeding Héctor a spoonful of medicine. Ernesto makes a note to get him to puke it up in a minute.

“Down to 39.5,” Coco says, weak cheerfulness in her voice as she puts the spoon aside and goes back to clutching Héctor’s left hand in both of hers.

The dark shadow on Ernesto’s face hides his disappointment.

Héctor isn’t going to keep deteriorating unless he can stop Coco from trying to save him. And there’s only one way to do that.

“Coco…” Ernesto comes over and touches the young woman’s shoulder, making sure she looks up into his pitying gaze. “39.5 is still very high.”

“I know,” Coco protests. “But that’s still something, isn’t it?”

Ernesto doesn’t answer. He just looks solemnly from Coco to Héctor.

“Your Papá was my best friend, you know.” Coco looks up at him, surprised. “It’s true. We played guitar together. We used to put on the most marvelous shows.”

 _“You’re_ the one he went out on tour with?”

“Si. We had so much fun! Traveling from city to city, sharing our music with the world, signing autographs, meeting fans…”

It’s hard for Coco to imagine her father enjoying such things. They go against everything he stands for now.

“I don’t think he ever would have stopped,” Ernesto smooths back Héctor’s wet, messy hair. “But he was lucky enough to find something even more important than music.” Ernesto smiles. “You.”

Part of Coco wants to feel flattered. And how can she not? She’s being complimented by Ernesto de la Cruz! But she also knows that if her Papá hadn’t gone out on tour, her Mamá wouldn’t have left. Papá has told her that many, many times. And the idea that Ernesto was a part of all that makes her worship him just a little bit less.

“He was a good man, your Papá Héctor.”

Ernesto sighs. Coco looks up at him, a strange expression on her face.

“You know what they say. You never know what you have until it’s gone.”

Coco’s expression doesn’t change. It’s like she’s studying him, trying to decide what to make of him.

“Can I get you anything, Coco? A drink? Some bread?”

“Papá’s not dead,” Coco says flatly.

“I know that. He’s still breathing.”

Coco lets go of Héctor’s hand and stands to her feet.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m here…” Ernesto speaks slowly, as if to a child, “Because my friend, your Papá, is very sick. And I don’t want to leave his side until after…well…he's...”

He doesn’t finish the thought, but he doesn’t need to.

“Get out.”

“Coco, please, be rational…”

“Get out!” Coco screams, grabbing the nearest object off the bedside table (not the lantern, thankfully) and chucking it at his face in the process. He narrowly catches it before it hits him right in the eye “Get out of my father’s house!”

“All right, all right!”

Ernesto ducks out into the hall and hears Coco crying as he shuts the door. He fully intends to wait right here. Coco is a kind, sensitive thing, surely she’ll come out and apologize eventually…

…and then he looks down and sees what she has thrown at him.

Ernesto opens it up and flips through the pages, his heart giving a leap as the notes dance on the paper in front of him.

“Thank you, Señorita Coco,” Ernesto thinks. “For this lovely, touching parting gift.”

As he walks out the door, trunk in hand, he rehearses the speech in his head. “She told me that she wanted me to have it-that her dying father would want me to have it! And what do you know? It contained the original sheet music for all of my old songs! I’d thought this book was lost forever!”

* * *

Imelda’s not at all sure that she believes Chichirron’s story about the tea, but she goes upstairs and brews herself a cup as soon as she has closed up the store. (After all, what’s the worst it could do? Kill her?) After drinking it, she sits at her rickety table for a while, willing her link to Héctor’s memories of her to become stronger, or clearer, but nothing happens. Irritated and dissatisfied, she finished up her work, pulls down her shades, and lays down in her bed.

“Please be safe, mi amor…” the words die on her lips as her heavy eyelids close.

* * *

There is no light coming from anywhere but the lamp when he wakes next. He frantically searches the room for her. She’s still there, leaning back in a chair right next to him.

“Imelda...stay.”

He feels her warm hand shake as she slips it into his. She speaks softly. And then she begins to sing. It’s a familiar, comforting tune, but he can’t quite grasp the words. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. She’s home. Everything will be okay.

He closes his eyes, and allows a smile to form on his lips as sleep takes over.

* * *

Standing over an endless black abyss…no, not standing. Floating. Her body is as still as if it were on solid ground, and yet she feels nothing under her boots.

She looks down and is startled to see that she’s resumed a translucent version of her living form. Apart from the fact that the distant city lights can be viewed _through_ her, she appears exactly as she did the day she died.

In the distance, she can make out a cluster of all buildings that can only belong to the land of the dead. When she turns around, though, she sees something else. Flat terrain, dotted with small, normal-sized structures, and the tiny, distant of the outline of Santa Cecilia’s church.

Imelda immediately tries to break into a run, but her feet will not carry her forward. She remains hovering in place.

The world around her suddenly grows thick with fog, obstructing her view so that she cannot see the land of the dead nor the land of the living.

“Hello!” she calls. “Is anyone there?”

“Imelda?”

Her heart leaps into her throat.

“He…Héctor?” she calls.

“Imelda!” he cries weakly.

The fog clears a bit. There he is, standing about ten feet away from her. He looks older than her now, and significantly weaker. But he’s _there._

She tries with all her might to run to him, and she sees him stumbling in her direction as well, but they remain where they are.

In spite of his pale complexion and the heavy bags under his eyes, his face is split from ear to ear with the largest grin she has ever seen.

“I can’t believe it! I finally found you!”

“Oh, Héctor! I miss you so much!”

He reaches out as if to touch her. She reaches back, even though she knows it’s impossible from where they’re standing.

“I’m so sorry for everything I’ve put you through, amor,” Imelda says. “I can’t imagine…”

“Shhh. It’s all right. We’re together now. Nothing else matters.”

“Héctor, listen to me! I was supposed to be there when you got back. I didn’t want to-”

“It was my fault, not yours,” he cuts in. “I never should have put anything ahead of you. And I swear on my love for you that I’m going to make it up to you. Every day for the rest of my life.”

“Héctor, stop! That’s not what I meant! I never wanted to leave you or Coco! I was m-”

The fog returns, enveloping them and snatching away the rest of their words, the world they’re trapped in shakes violently…

…and in seconds, Imelda wakes in her bed, her bones rattling as hard as they just were in the dream that wasn’t quite a dream.

When she’s stopped trembling, an angry sob escapes her throat.

He’s gone. She may never get to speak to him again.

But he still loves her.

He _still loves her._

* * *

Bright, brilliant light fills the room, which for the first time in what feels like years, is not scorching nor freezing, but a perfectly comfortable lukewarm.

_“Though I have to travel far  
Remember me_

_Each time you hear a sad guitar_

_Know that I’m with you the only way that I can be…”_

Héctor opens his eyes and smiles when they land on the source of the beautiful voice, which at long last he hears clearly.

_“Until you’re in my arms again!”_

“Coco.”

His daughter breathes a deep sigh of relief at the sound of her name. When she reaches to smooth back his hair from his forehead and finds that his fever is broken, tears prick the corners of her eyes.

She looks as though she’s aged ten years in as many days.

“Sorry I frightened you.”

“Shh. It’s okay, Papá. Everything’s all right.”

The door opens, and there’s a smiling young woman in a bright red dress holding a tray of food and drinks.

“Rosita? “What are you doing here, child?”

“We’re taking care of you! What else?”

The sweet girl comes in and sets the tray down on the nightstand. Once Héctor is sitting halfway up with a hot mug in his hand, Coco begins to eat herself. Oscar, Felipe, and Julio all come in to check on them, and all are delighted that Héctor is coherent at last. They only leave after Coco repeatedly insists that it’s all right for them to go to work.

Once Héctor and Coco are alone in the room again, Coco says, “Don’t ever forget me again.”

“I won’t. _Lo promento.”_

They share closest thing they can manage to a hug, with Héctor lying down and feeling as though his limbs are made of lead.

And he goes back to sleep, knowing that even though his wife is gone, he will always be surrounded by family who love him and care about him.

* * *

Dawn is just breaking when Imelda is woken by a scraping sound, like a long branch against wood.

She turns over in her bed, determined to go back to sleep, but sits up when she hears a soft roar.

When she opens her front door, she finds the hugest, most magnificent alibrije she has ever seen. Brilliant greens, blues, and golds shimmer off feathers and fur, full-length ram horns glimmer behind quivering ears, and fluorescent yellow claws retract and extend as the massive creature kneads the ground in front of her, like an affectionate kitten.

The animal opens her mouth and drops three objects at Imelda’s feet. The first is a broken leather collar with a tag that says “Pepita.” The second two are objects Imelda has seen before; a man’s bowtie and a pink hair ribbon.

Her heart skips a beat.

“Are they…are they _here?”_

As soon as the words are out, Imelda realizes it was a ridiculous thought. Of course they’re not. She would have noticed instantly if the strongest memories of her vanished.

The great beast sits down on her rear haunches, causing a few early birds in the streets to back away. She lays her head down on her front paws, looking up at Imelda with wide, eager eyes that seem to say, “I hope I have served you well.”

“You really did watch over them for me, didn’t you?”

In response, Pepita begins to purr. Imelda walks over and strokes the creature’s face. The purring grows louder as the animal gently leans into her master’s touch, as if to say, "And now, it's time I watch over you."


	8. 1943 Part 2

**A/N: So hey, I'm alive, everyone! And this story only has a few chapters left and I'm determined to finish them in the next few weeks here so please bear with me!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the songs mentioned in this chapter, one is a real Mexican folk song like La Llorona and one is a modified version of a Dreamworks song.**

Héctor’s illness has passed and left him in a serene reverie. He feels no need to grumble or moan as he navigates the long, tedious road to recovery. He doesn’t protest when everyone in the entire family insists that he take at least a week off of work, or complain when Oscar and Felipe spend two hours arguing over whose black bowler hat is whose, or even join in the last-minute wedding panic that leads to a huge fight involving every woman in the family over which type of juice should be used to make the cake frosting red. Even when Héctor discovers that his songbook is missing, and no amount of looking for it is able to turn it up, he simply purchases a new one and begins to write down his songs. Some of them for the third time.

“I’ll run a thousand miles to you,” he sings to himself as he writes the notes. “Through deserts and through valleys. I’ll walk down any…” He frowns, trying to remember the next line, then takes his best guess. “…road with you, if you would marry me.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Coco looking at him.

“You need something, mija?”

She shakes her head. She looks at him, as of wanting an answer to a question she doesn’t even know to ask. Then she walks away.

“No scorching sun or freezing cold could stop me on my journey,” he continues. “If you would promise me your heart, and love me for eternity.”

Coco alone has noticed the change in him. She clearly finds it disconcerting for a while, but eventually Julio persuades her to be glad of it. Which is good, because Héctor has no idea how to explain to her what sounds maddening even in his own head: that he now knows, for absolute certain, that Imelda still loves him.

* * *

For years, Héctor assumed that walking Coco down the aisle would be the most bittersweet moment of his life. But he feels nothing but joy as he releases his baby girl into the arms of the boy who he’s come to care for as much as he imagines he would a son. Gripping his garland-wrapped cane in his left hand, he watches them exchange their vows with a wistful smile. He sheds a few tears when they share their first kiss as husband and wife, and then again when they share their first dance.

_From the Sierra Morena,_   
_Cielito lindo, they do come down_   
_The pair of little black eyes,_   
_Cielito Lindo, do sneak on by_   
_Ay, ay, ay, ay_   
_Do sing and don't cry,_   
_Because it is by singing that they do gladden_   
_Cielito Lindo, los corazones_

Out of the corner of his eye, Héctor watches Oscar and Felipe playing their trumpets onstage with the band. For the first time, it doesn’t bother him that his family is performing publicly. He himself feels the eyes of everyone in town on him when he and Coco dance to _Remember Me._

It was decided before the wedding that Julio and Coco would be living at Héctor’s house for the foreseeable future. They still has concerns about his health, and besides, the house is larger. The area above the furniture shop where the Lopez family lives could barely fit four people as it was. It’s not altogether surprising when a few weeks after the wedding, Rosita asks if she can come live at the Rivera house, too. “You have a bigger kitchen,” she admits sheepishly. They are glad to have her, though her endless supply of cakes has the twins bouncing off the walls with energy on a regular basis. Julio and Rosita’s parents joke that when they picked out the kids' wedding present-a gently used radio-they’d envisioned being able to enjoy it, but they admit that the privacy is nice after so many years.

In March, Coco and Julio tell everyone over Sunday brunch that they’re planning on doing the upcoming supply run to Tijuana for the furniture store. For the first time in her life, Coco will be leaving Santa Cecilia for several days.

“Make sure you each pack two changes of clothes,” Héctor advises. “And a small bottle of arsenic on account of the rats.”

Señor Lopez grimaces. “I’ve never seen rats at any of the inns I’ve stayed at.”

“Ah, well, maybe things have changed in the past twenty-five years. One time Imelda was bitten by a rat in the middle of the night. She woke up and tried to beat the damn thing to death, but ended up breaking Ernesto’s pinky toe instead.”

Coco looks surprised, and not just because of the casual mention of her mother that’s gotten everyone else’s attention.

“It’s true then? You and Ernesto de la Cruz really did play together?”

“Si,” says Héctor. “The three of us used to tour together all the time, before you were born. Imelda and I had dances we would do while Ernesto played, sometimes we’d all sing together, sometimes she’d sing backup for us.”

“And he’s the one you were with when Mamá disappeared?”

“Si, mija. Don’t you remember? You were there.” Coco shakes her head. “I knew him when. He used to come over all the time. You threw up on him once.”

Coco giggles. But then later, in private, she confesses to Héctor that Ernesto helped her take care of him when he was sick-and that just before he recovered, she sent Ernesto away.

“It had gotten so bad…and he was convinced that you were dying, and he was trying to get me to accept it. I just didn’t want to hear it, so I made him leave. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, Coco,” he says. “He and I aren’t on the best of terms. And you were only thinking about what was best for our family-something Ernesto has never done.”

* * *

“So, _mi cielito_ , what do you think of the big city so far?”

“Well,” Coco squeezes her husband’s hand, “We have only been here for five minutes. But so far, I think it’s…”

Coco looks around. The train station they’re in has more people crowded into it than the plaza at Santa Cecilia on holidays. Three people have bumped into Julio since they disembarked, jostling his suitcase. She can smell smog in the air from all the automobiles, and hear the sounds of three separate musical instruments playing three separate songs. One man is screaming at a ticket salesman over prices, and several babies and toddlers are crying.

“Well, it’s different,” Coco finishes.

Julio gives her a kiss on the cheek. “We won’t be staying forever.” A few seconds later, they’re both startled by a loud, high shriek.

“Give that back! That’s mine!” shouts a woman, both hands clutching the handle of a carpetbag that looks as though it’s about to fall apart. Two boys in their late teens pull at the ends of it, threatening to rip it to pieces. Just before the woman is about to topple over, relieving herself of both her carpetbag and her dignity, Coco removes her boot and smacks one of the boys right between the eyes with the heel. Julio grabs the other boy over his arms and tosses him aside. Both teens scramble and bolt faster than anyone can react.

Coco grabbs Julio’s arm to avoid losing him in the crowd, and turns to face the woman they just rescued. She looks to be in her late twenties, and very, very thin, with muscular legs longer than the rest of her body. Her black hair is wiry and sticks out from under her hat every which way.

“Are you okay?” Coco asks.

“Si!” the woman catches her breath. “Muchos gracias, Señora…”

“Coco Rivera-Lopez,” Coco shakes her hand. “And this is my husband, Julio.”

“Gracias, Coco and Julio,” the woman shakes Julio’s hand vigorously. “I am Carla. You folks aren’t from Tijuana, are you?"

“No, we’re visiting from Santa Cecilia. How about you?”

“I live in Mexico City,” says Carla. “My brother and I-we were in town visiting our uncle. But my uncle died, and now my brother must stay here and take care of the funeral arrangements. And I need to get back to the city on time for my next show.”

“So that’s why you’re traveling alone!” Julio realizes. “Next time, you should get yourself a nice solid pair of boots like Coco has.”

Carla laughs, in spite of their situation. “Wait-you must let me repay you for your troubles.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” Coco insists.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course!” Julio concurs. “We’re happy to help.”

“Well, at least let me get you some tickets to Ernesto de la Cruz’s next concert!”

Coco and Julio exchange a look. They both stifle a laugh.

“No, really! I dance backup for him. I can get you tickets! Maybe even backstage passes!”

“We appreciate the offer,” says Julio. “But we’re not de la Cruz’s biggest fans.”

“Oh,” Carla looks surprised. “Well…here.” She takes out a piece of paper, scribbles her address down on it. “If you’re ever in Mexico City, let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. Please.”

Coco smiles warmly. “We will, Carla. Travel safe.”

After the young woman disappears, Coco laces her fingers into Julio’s.

“Let’s get our shopping done so we can get home, shall we, amor?”

“Absolutely.”

As they make their way down the street, Coco could swear that she hears an accordion playing the chorus to _Un Poco Loco._ Surely, it must have been her imagination.

* * *

Coco and Julio end up returning from the supply run early, not because she hates the city, but because she’s not feeling well. Everyone in the family frets and fusses over her more than necessary, emotionally scarred from the turmoil surrounding Héctor’s recent illness. But she’s fine. In fact, she soon discovers that her nausea is coming from the best possible cause: she and Julio are expecting a baby.

Everyone is overjoyed at the possibility of a new arrival-the first baby to be born on either side of the family in over twenty years. The men begin building nursery furniture, the women begin gathering and mending old clothes and blankets, and Oscar and Felipe begin decorating the nursery. Dinnertime discussion turns to names and plans and hopes and dreams for the little nugget growing inside Coco’s belly. Héctor writes a song for his unborn grandchild.

Some days, when Coco isn’t up to going to work, Héctor stays behind at the house with her. She’s happy to let him, partly because she secretly wishes he’d spend less time on his feet as well. He hasn’t been the same since his illness: just as skilled at carpentry and upholstery, but with far less stamina.

One hot summer evening, Coco finds herself resting in the sitting room, one cushion under her back and another under her head, with a pile of baby blankets in need of mending dropped across her lap. The radio host is going on about the war America is fighting with Japan and some European country.

“Here,” Héctor comes over and hands Coco a cold glass of water.

“Gracias.” Coco smiles as he sits down next to her on the couch. He cautiously reaches over and touches her belly.

“That’s your abuelo, baby,” says Coco. “He’s going to sing to you and hold you and love you so much.”

Héctor smiles. “I already do.”

“Would you change the station?” Coco asks. “The baby is tired of hearing about airplanes and bombs.”

“Sure, mija. For the baby.”

Héctor turns the knob. The radio crackles. “And now, for the first time ever in almost twenty years, a brand new song from Santa Cecilia’s very own Ernesto de la Cruz!”

Héctor is about to change the station again, but he freezes when he hears the chilling notes of a tune both foreign and familiar.  
It should be warmer, gentler, slower. But the words are the same.

_“I’ll run a thousand miles to you_   
_Through deserts and through valleys_   
_I’ll walk down any road with you_   
_If you will marry me_   
_No scorching sun or freezing cold_   
_Could stop me on my journey_   
_If you would promise me your heart_   
_And love me for eternity”_

This is the song that Héctor wrote to propose to Imelda with. He would never give Ernesto permission to use it. He has never even sang it in front of Ernesto.

_“My dearest one, my darling girl_   
_Your beauty it astounds me_   
_And I’m as rich as any king_   
_When I feel your arms around me_

_To love and kiss to sweetly hold_   
_For the dancing and the dreaming_   
_Through all life’s sorrows and delights_   
_I’ll always want you near me_

_I’ll run a thousand miles to you_   
_Through deserts and through valleys_   
_I’ll walk down any road with you_   
_If you would marry me”_

The last word contains ten syllables, accompanied by what sounds like a full orchestra including multiple guitars.

When the radio begins to play some other song, Héctor finally turns it off. He looks to Coco, shock and anger running like ice water down their backs.

“Ernesto de la Cruz stole my songbook,” Héctor says in disbelief. “He came here to see me, he asked me for my music, and when I didn’t give it to him, he found a way into my home and stole it.”

Coco opens her mouth to apologize, but she knows he’ll only protest. She rests a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t understand how he could do such a thing,” he continues, anger rising. “That man said that he would move heaven and earth for me!”

Coco frowns. Where has she heard that before? Has her Papá already told her this story? Or…

“When did he do that?” she asks.

“When I told him I was coming home to Santa Cecilia. First he told me he could never hate me, and that he was coming home with me after we did one last show together, and that he would move heaven and earth for me. And then we played, and then we got on the train, and then when we got back, he walked me all the way home. He never wanted to leave the city in the first place, but he came with me, and he walked me all the way to the door just to make sure that I got home safely.” Héctor sighs. “Sorry, it’s just…”

When he looks back up at his daughter, the expression on her face suggests something between struck by lightning and seen a ghost.

“What is it?” Héctor asks, a nasty feeling in his gut that he’s about to hear something that’s going to change his world as he knows it.

“Papá…”Coco puts one hand over Héctor’s hand, her body and voice both trembling. “I have to tell you something.”

She tells him all about the movie that she and Julio saw all those years ago, the plot and the bits of dialogue that match what Héctor is saying exactly.

After five minutes of giving no response whatsoever, Héctor finally asks, “How does the wife die? In _El Camino a Casa_?”

“She doesn’t die. The villains die. One of them is shot in the alley, and Ernesto chops up the other one and buries him under a mango tree in his yard. I know, this sounds absolutely crazy. I’m crazy, right? You don’t think that…”

In answer, Héctor stands up, retrieves a shovel from his stash of tools, and goes outside.

He stands frozen, under the mango tree, holding a shovel.

He can’t dig. He can’t not dig.

This is crazy. Here he is, trying to decide whether or not to dig up the body of his wife who may or may not be dead.

Who disappeared twenty-three years ago. At the exact same time that he told Ernesto he wanted to go home and stop touring.

But Ernesto helped him look for Imelda…

For five minutes. And then he encouraged Héctor to give Coco up for adoption and go back to playing music.

But how could Ernesto de la Cruz be a murderer? The boy that Héctor had grown up with like a cousin, loved like a brother, stood by through thick and thin. How could he even think such a thing?

About the man who had stolen his songbook and left town when he was deathly ill. After telling Coco that he was going to die.

And then as soon as he was gone, with the songbook, Héctor made a miraculous recovery.

Héctor laughs out loud. This is ridiculous. This is insane!

Obviously, now he has to dig around the mango tree just to prove to himself-and to Coco-how absolutely absurd this theory is.

So he marks a large circle around the tree, and begins to dig a trench. Coco grabs a garden trowel and helps out. As the other members of the family arrive home from work, Coco explains the situation to them, and they all grab whatever tools they can think of and join in. Oscar and Felipe end up digging with buckets.

After two hours, it’s Rosita who says the words that bring everything to a screeching halt.

“I have something.”

Everyone crowds around the four-feet-deep pit that she’s kneeling in. Héctor climbs in beside her and motions for her to step aside. Oscar and Felipe each take Rosita by an arm and hoist her out of the pit, leaving Héctor to investigate it himself.

As soon as he lays his eyes on it, he knows. It’s just a boot, trashed and rotting and worn, but he knows it’s hers.

More digging reveals smooth, long, bones. A foul-smelling, dirt-filled faded dress with ribs inside. A skull. A hairpin that looks like it’s about to crack in half just from being looked at.

He unearths all that’s left of her, then picks her up and holds her to his chest for the first time in twenty-three years.

All this time, she’s been right here. Home with him.

* * *

  
Lacking anything more sensible, they lay her down on a bench in the sitting room and cover her with a blanket. Coco sits herself down nearby, looking and feeling too numb to cry. The twins, for once, have nothing to say. Julio and Rosita feel like outsiders, and at the same time, as though they’re mourning the loss of a woman they never even met.

Héctor walks into his room, yanks his drawer full of saved articles and letters and responses out of its bureau, takes it outside, and flings it angrily into the hole while letting loose a cry of rage that is so unlike him it scares everyone.

When he comes inside though, he sinks to the floor between Imelda’s body and where Coco is sitting.

Twenty-three years of searching, wasted. Avoiding music, wasted. Waiting for her to come back, wasted. Wondering where he went wrong, wasted.

Her life, wasted.

All because Ernesto wanted to be known as the greatest musician of all time.

“Perhaps we should make arrangements?” Julio suggests gently.

“I can go to town,” Rosita offers. “Mamá and Papá and I can start to spread the word, and I can go for the priest.”

“No,” Héctor says, his voice hollow, cold. “Not yet. We can’t tell anyone.”

Coco finally speaks, her voice trembling.

“Why not, Papá?”

“There’s something I’ve got to do first.”

Everyone looks to Héctor, and sees the determined, rage in his eyes.

The twins exchange a glance, then rise to their feet. So does Coco, then Julio, then Rosita.

“No,” says Coco. “There’s something _we’ve_ got to do first.”


	9. 1943 Part 3

All of them stand solid, a protective army around him. Coco and Julio, hand in hand with their emerging baby belly, cheeks as pink and fresh as rose petals. Oscar and Felipe, salt-and-pepper haired but as lanky as they always were, all limbs and fingers balled into fists. Rosita wielding a soup ladle that she’s slapping into her palm as though she were planning on cracking it over somebody’s head.

“Well,” says Julio. “When do we leave for Mexico City? That’s where de la Cruz lives, no?”

Héctor shakes his head. _“I_ will be leaving for the train station tomorrow afternoon. Alone. I won’t have the rest of you putting yourselves at risk. I need all of you to…”

 _“Are you kidding me?”_ Coco plants her hands on her hips, her voice crackling like fire. “No, you will _not_ be going anywhere alone! Earlier this year you nearly _died_ because of de la Cruz. Do you _seriously_ expect me to just let you wander off to go see him by yourself? Papá, you’re forty-two years old and you’re built like a toothpick, and you’re planning on marching off to Mexico City armed with, what, a guitar? A hammer and nails? You are in no more position to be confronting this bastard all on your own than any of us! Absolutely _not!_ We will do this together, or not at all?”

Héctor stares at her, into his baby girl’s big brown eyes filled with a ferocity that he would not have thought possible.

He wouldn’t have thought _a lot_ of things possible. For example, his best friend killing his wife in cold blood and hiding the body on his own property.

“My Coco,” he finally says. “You have never been more your mother’s daughter.”

Coco straightens up, trying not to look too flattered by the compliment. “Even if I didn’t have to worry about you, which is not the case, I would _never_ let you confront the man who killed my Mamá without me.”

“Nor would I,” Julio chimes in, cracking his knuckles.

“He must pay for what he has done to this family!” Rosita shouts.

“For stealing our sister…” Oscar starts.

“Your wife…” Filipe continues.

“My child’s abuela.” Coco places one hand on her baby bump.

“But how are we going to do this?” Héctor asks. “How will we pay for _six tickets_ to Mexico City? And how could we possibly get to Ernesto all at once?"

Coco and Julio exchange a look.

“Papá, I think I might know a way.”

* * *

As it turns out, Oscar and Felipe have enough money socked away to be able to pay for their own train tickets. Coco and Julio talk it over and decide to sell her grandmother’s music box to pay for theirs, and Héctor pays for himself and Rosita.

In two days time, the whole family finds themselves chugging along on a train to Mexico City. Héctor sits in the aisle seat getting bumped by strangers while Rosita sits on the bench beside him, looking out the window. Julio and Coco are leaning against each other and drifting in and out of sleep, and the twins sit slumped across the aisle, bent over some super-secret project that they aren’t showing anyone. All of the windows on the train are open because the heat is absolutely sweltering. September is not the best time to travel.

Julio thought to leave a note on the table in the Rivera house explaining where they are and what they are doing, just in case something happens. His parents will find it and know to look for them. Rosita phoned ahead for a hotel reservation, which she made under a fake name. The twins bought travel supplies and boarded up the house. Coco did most of the packing.

Héctor took some wood home from the workshop and used it to build a coffin for his wife.

“Did we remember to pack the blankets?” Héctor asks.

“Hmm?” Coco stirs, lifting her head from her husband’s shoulder. “Si, Papá, we did.”

“And the return tickets?”

“Mhm.”

“And the arsenic, for the rats?”

“We have everything, Papá,” she promises him.

Héctor half-smiles and lets her go back to sleep.

He remembers the last time he rode on a train-the last time that every part of him was truly happy. Because he thought he was coming home to her. He remembers Ernesto, sitting right beside him, smiling without a care in the world. Knowing damn well that Imelda was dead. He remembers all the times when Ernesto encouraged him to just give up and stop waiting for her to come back. Because she never would.

 _This is for you, mi amor,_ Héctor thinks to himself.

* * *

As soon as they arrive in Mexico City, Coco and Julio leave to go find Carla while everyone else gets settled at the hotel. Carla is very surprised to see them, but excited, too. She is happy to give them six backstage passes for the following night’s de la Cruz spectacular. She tells them to come straight to the stage door and meet her twenty minutes before showtime.

The next morning, after they eat some brunch that Rosita went out and bought at a market stall, Oscar and Felipe gather everyone around to present the scheme they’ve been working on.

“Now, here’s what we were thinking,” says Oscar.

“Even with the passes, we’re each going to need be in disguise in order to get backstage,” Felipe continues.

“After all, if de la Cruz sees us even from a distance, he will recognize us.”

“Precisely. So, we have brought makeup and costumes for everyone!”

Felipe flings open a suitcase, revealing a huge pile of cheap white fabric, all skirts and dresses with skull designs crudely painted along the hems in glittery gold paint.

“So, here’s our story. We are the Cruzcito Fanclub of Xiajarana.”

“We have listened to every single one of Ernesto’s songs.”

“We get together once a month to discuss the meanings of each one.”

“And we have always dreamed of seeing him in concert.”

“But he would never come to our sleepy town of Xiajarana…”

“…because it’s so far away from Mexico city…”

“…and also, it doesn’t exist.”

“Anyways,” Oscar tosses Rosita a dress shirt, pants, and a false beard. “Your name is Lalo Rosario. You’re a forty-year-old cobbler, you have always wanted to learn how to play guitar so that you can be just like de la Cruz, and you slept with Carla to get our tickets.”

Filpe tosses Héctor a long, thin, slender dress. “And _you’re_ Lalo’s wife, Vera. You’re twenty-nine, or so you say, you only like de la Cruz’s music because it reminds you that maybe there’s a better life for you out there, and you _wanted_ to sleep with Carla to get the tickets.”

Héctor sighs. “I’m going to have to shave my goatee, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” says Oscar. “At long last, yes.”

“Hey!”

“Now, Felipe and I will be spinster sisters who work in a dress shop together, and we are…” Oscar switches his voice to a high-pitched tone, “Just _dying_ to meet that handsome devil Ernesto in hopes that he will turn out to be the man of our dreams.”

“Am I going to have to dress up like a woman, too?” asks Julio.

“Nah,” says Oscar. “You and Coco will have to go as you are, because Carla already knows what you look like.”

“But luckily, Ernesto won’t see you immediately, because you’ll be wearing these hats,” Felipe tosses them two huge, cheap mariachi sombreros.

“And holding up this sign!”

Oscar unfolds a banner that reads, “We’re naming our baby after Ernesto de la Cruz!”

Over the course of the next few hours, the members of Héctor’s family go around primping each other’s costumes. Héctor, Oscar, and Felipe are clean shaven and decorated with enough white and gold makeup to cover up their five o’clock shadows. Rosita has her beard glued on and is given wrinkles that make her look fifteen years older, plus white and gold skulls on each cheek. All of the men except Julio wear wigs with golden ribbons woven into braids. Coco has gold ribbons woven into her braids, too, and a large white dress that matches the mens’, but with a huge golden skull painted over her belly. The white fabric is so cheap and flimsy that it has to be worn on top of everyone’s regular clothes.

In the end, they all look at their reflection in the hotel room mirror.

“How do we look?” asks Oscar.

“Absolutely awful!” says Rosita. “Well done, tios!”

“Do we have everything we need?” Coco asks Héctor.

“I think so. Let’s get this show on the road.”

* * *

The Rivera family attracts a lot of attention on the way to the concert. Fortunately, it is all from people who think they’re a bunch of silly, overzealous Ernesto de la Cruz enthusiasts from out of town. Even Carla, while amused, seems a little horrified by their over-the-top appearance as she ushers them backstage. Then she cheerfully leaves them in a corridor between the stage and the green room and goes to warm up with the other dancers. Coco and Julio position themselves behind their baby name sign, and everyone else pretends to be enthralled with their concert flyers.

“Great,” says Oscar, in a voice so high pitched it could shatter glass. “Now, all we have to do is wait for de la Cruz!”

_“Yeeeees?”_

They all spin around. There he is, mouthful of perfect white teeth glinting, hair slicked back, deep blue mariachi suit sparkling, voice as smooth as silk.

Everyone freezes. Rosita, who is standing closest to him, clears her throat and holds out a pen as though she wants him to sign her autograph book. Ernesto beams and begins to do so, then suddenly hesitates.

“Don’t I…know you?”

Rosita shakes her head nervously just as Héctor lunges forward and punches Ernesto square in the throat.

_“That’s for murdering the love of my life!”_

“Hé…Héctor?”

Coco throws down her part of the sign, slides forward, and kicks Ernesto in the crotch so hard he doubles over in pain and screams.

_“And **that** is for trying to murder my Papá!”_

“Security! _Security!”_

In moments, there are a dozen guards surrounding the Rivera family. They are outnumbered two to one.

As soon as Ernesto gets to his feet, he makes a run for it. Héctor begins to run after him, as do Oscar and Felipe.

Coco stands in the middle of the hallway like a human shield, forcing the security guards to go around her. Rosita and Julio begun throwing whatever objects they can find at the security guards, hitting them in the head and shins and generally blocking their path. Coco manages to tackle one guard to the floor and sits down cross-legged on his back so he can’t move. Julio trips a guard who then cracks a tooth on the concrete floor and passes out. Rosita clubs a guard with a metal rod she finds on the floor, until finally he flees yelping.

Oscar and Felipe knock over a cart full of lights as they run by, causing several guards to trip on the cart or on broken glass. Both of the twins’ dresses end up getting torn as they run, and Héctor’s snags on a rusty nail that tears it clean down the back. The few seconds that it takes Héctor to get the dress completely off gives Ernesto enough of a headstart to turn around, grab Héctor around the shoulders with both hands, and throw him down onto a metal platform.

“Señor de la Cruz!” calls an oblivious man with a clipboard who’s wearing earmuffs. “You’re on in five!”

Héctor lets out an agonized groan. Oscar and Felipe both look over at Héctor, but before either of them can turn to help them, Felipe is grabbed by a security guard who both twins then have to tackle to the ground. Héctor sits up, staggers to his feet, and then immediately falls down again…because the platform he’s sitting on is _rising_.

“And now, presenting, the one, the only, Ernesto de la Cruz!”

And there Héctor is, standing in front of a crowd of thousands of people, beneath a giant bell, in the glare of a spotlight, in front of a microphone stand.

Beside that microphone stand is a guitar that is painted to resemble his, but is not his. All tuned up and ready to go.

He can’t make out the faces in the audience, but he can hear a confused murmur as everyone simultaneously realizes that he is _not_ the one, the only, Ernesto de la Cruz.

Héctor has not been onstage in over twenty years. And he promised himself long ago that the only way he ever would be again, is if Imelda was there with him. If it was him playing, and her singing.

But right now, it doesn’t look like he has much of a choice.

 _“Ay,”_ he begins. _“De mi llorona.”_

The microphone squeals.

_“Llorona de azul celeste.”_

Héctor picks up the guitar.

_“Ay, de mi llorona  
Llorona de azul celeste.”_

Héctor looks down. He can see Coco standing in the left wing of the stage, her jaw hanging open.

 _This is for you, mi amor. You and our_ _family._

_“Y aunque la vida me cueste, llorona  
No dejaré de quererte  
No dejaré de quererte”_

The guitar in Héctor’s hands is suddenly joined by an entire orchestra, and the crowd begins to clap and cheer. They’re all convinced that he is part of the show, that he is Ernesto’s surprise opening act.

_“Me subí al pino más alto, llorona  
A ver si te divisaba  
Me subí al pino más alto, llorona  
A ver si te divisaba_

_Como el pino era tierno, llorona  
Al verme llorar, lloraba  
Como el pino era tierno, llorona  
Al verme llorar, lloraba”_

Héctor sets down his guitar and begins to dance during the musical interlude. He makes his way around the stage, his feet moving in time to the music, catching a few glimpses of Coco’s apprehensive, awed expression.

_“Ay, de mi llorona, llorona  
Llorona de azul celeste”_

But before he can begin the next line, another voice joins his.

_“Ay, de mi llorona, llorona  
Llorona de azul celeste”_

Héctor’s eyes narrow as the crowd goes wild. Opposite him on the stage, there’s Ernesto, prancing around. As though he’s the musical genius that he killed Imelda to be known as.

 _“Y aunque la vida me cueste, llorona  
_ _No dejaré de quererte”_

Ernesto narrows his eyes back at Héctor. They begin to sing in unison.

 _“Y aunque la vida me cueste, llorona  
_ _No dejaré de quererte  
_ _No dejaré de quererte…  
_ _No dejaré de quererte…  
_ _Ay ay ay ay!”_

Ernesto bows down, and Héctor bows with him.

“Gracias, mi familia!” Ernesto calls out to the audience. Then he claps Héctor on the back. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find my young apprentice his own guitar!”

The audience begins to laugh as Ernesto drags Héctor off the stage and back into the left wing of the stage. They find themselves in a dimly-lit, silent room. Just the two of them.

“Security!” Ernesto calls.

Héctor uses every ounce of strength he has to punch Ernesto in the face.

“You took everything from me!” Héctor shouts. “You _rat!”_

Ernesto shoves Héctor aside.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, old friend!”

“Yes you do! You killed my wife, you had her buried her under a tree like a dog, and you stole our music!”

“You _gave_ me those songs!”

“Not the ones I wrote for Imelda and Coco! You _stole_ that second song book!”

“Well, I shouldn’t have had to! You should have been _honored_ to give it to me! I am Ernesto de la Cruz, the greatest musician of all time!"

“You’re no great musician! You don’t have a spark of creativity in you! If you did, you would have come up with your own plot for that stupid movie instead of rewriting the story of how you killed my wife and making yourself the good guy!”

Ernesto leans forward and grabs Héctor by both of his suspenders, and holds the slimmer, weaker man inches away from his face.

“I should have killed you instead of her,” Ernesto snarls.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I am willing to do what it takes to seize my moment, and I thought that you would be, too.”

A loud, mechanical squeal interrupts the fight between the two men.

Ernesto looks around the room.

Lurking in the shadows, Coco, Rosita, Julio, Oscar, and Felipe are each holding the end of a microphone.

And every single one of those microphones is on.

“No…. _NO!”_

Ernesto drops Héctor and bolts out the door, runs out to the center of the stage, and finds a shell-shocked audience waiting for him.

Ernesto grins. “I apologize for that…eh…diversion. Now, where were we?”

About five thousand people start booing him at once.

“Por favor, mi familia! Settle down, I have a new song for you!”

A tomato lands onstage beside Ernesto, who ignores it and clears his throat. _“Remember me…though I have to say goodbye, remember me...”_

Ernesto looks desperately to the orchestra conductor in the pit. The conductor looks Ernesto dead in the eye and snaps his baton in half. He flings the pieces at Ernesto. Two other musicians fling their sheet music. One guy throws his trumpet. Soon enough, the audience members join in. Lightbulbs, eggs, tomatoes, baseballs, toys, bibles, and one entire folding chair are violently thrown at the sage. He rushes for the door to the room he was in with Héctor, but it’s locked. While he is jiggling the doorknob, he is hit in the back of the head with a cymbal.

Not knowing what else to do, Ernesto begins running up the stage steps that Héctor danced down a few minutes before, so people start aiming their objects higher.

Something, somehow, whacks the lever for the rope that secures the giant bell.

And that is how in front of an audience of thousands of angry ex-fans, the great Ernesto de la Cruz is crushed under a ton and a half of pure steel.


	10. 1943

“Hey-isn’t that?”

“Dios mio! It’s really him!”

“But how can he be-”

“When did-”

Ernesto staggers to his feet, taking in the scene around him. His usual adoring crowd, pointing and gaping in awe at his magnificence. Nothing new there.

Except that now, they’re nothing but bones.

He looks up at the sign that hangs above them. “Bienvenido a la Tierra de los Muertos.”

“Senor de la Cruz!” an elderly skeleton asks. “What are you doing here?”

He lowers his head.

“I was crushed by a giant bell, while performing some new songs for my fans. Most of them never even got to hear my songs. I feel so lost here without them-they’re my family.”

The dead eat it right up.

A welcoming procession forms around Ernesto as he fills out his intake paperwork. By the time he’s finished with that, he’s sung five songs, including two brand new ones that he was planning on debuting at his concert in the land of the living.

He forgoes the usual second stop at the department of family reunions, saying, “I already know who I belong with. The world es mi familia.”

* * *

Word travels surprisingly fast in the land of the dead. The following morning, Imelda already has customers greeting her with, “Have you heard the news? Your fraud is here!”

So the great Ernesto de la Cruz has died.

Imelda should be happy about this. The man who aggravated her most in the world, both as a human and as Hector’s wife, and who was the greatest source of tension in her marriage for five years, and who’s been claiming Hector’s songs as his own for god knows how long, is no longer alive.

But the reality is, he didn’t do her much good then and he’s not about to do her much good now. If anything, he might actually be _more_ annoying now that he’s accessible. And playing Hector’s songs where she can actually _hear_ them coming out of his mouth.

She wants to go find him and club him upside the head with her boot. She wants to go find him and beg him to tell her all about her family and how they’re faring. She wants to never see that shiny plastic mariachi again.

These are the things that circle her mind as she goes about her morning, ringing up customers, making shoes, and ordering supplies.

Then, just as she’s about to close up for lunch, the little bell above her door rings, and in staggers the brittle old man who sold her the marigold tea petals last winter. She’s a little surprised to see that he’s still around.

“What can I do for you, Chichirron? Need your shoes repaired again?”

“No, Senora. It’s…it’s about-” he points to Imelda’s _“Ernesto de la Cruz is a Fraud”_ sign.

“Ay, si, I heard. He’s here.”

“No no no, wait.” Chichirron holds up both his hands, then collapses into a chair. “A woman, a new neighbor of mine…just arrived in Shantytown this morning. Her nurse’s grandson…was at his last concert… _Ernesto’s_ last concert…”

Chichirron takes a long, deep breath.

“Senora Rivera, I suggest you sit down.”

* * *

Only twelve hours after his arrival in the land of the dead, Ernesto takes the stage for his first concert. He looks out on an adoring crowd, holding the microphone in his hand. He grins, and begins to sing.

"Señores y señoras  
Buenas tardes, buenas dias  
Buenas tardes, buenas dias  
Señores y señoritas

To be here with you today brings me joy, que alegria  
For this music is my language, and..."

He hesitates when he hears a crackle in his microphone. It makes him nervous after the way he died. But nothing horrible happens.

"...the world es mi..."

Wait a second. The microphone isn't working at all.

"MURDERER!"

He hardly has a second to glance up before he is smacked upside the face with the boot of a Rivera with a microphone for the second time in 24 hours. And the third. And the fourth. And the fifth. And the fiftieth.

" _HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO LIVE WITH YOURSELF FOR TWENTY-TWO YEARS AFTER YOU KILLED ME IN COLD BLOOD? YOU LEFT MY HUSBAND WITHOUT A WIFE! YOU LEFT MY DAUGHTER WITHOUT A MOTHER! YOU LET ALL OF US FEEL LIKE WE HAD TORN OUR FAMILY APART! BUT IT WASN'T US! IT WAS YOU! YOU! YOU!"_

Every single word she hollered was punctuated by a smack across the skull that send Ernesto's head spinning. Imelda didn't even notice that people were starting to approach, intending to come to Ernesto's aid, which an elderly shrill voice from the crowd hollered

"IT'S TRUE! HE ADMITTED IT, BACK IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING! MY NURSE'S GRANDSON HEARD EVERYTHING!"

"HEY!" called another voice, this one deep and male. "I WAS THERE, TOO! HE KILLED HER TO STEAL HER HUSBAND'S SONGS!"

"AND THEN HE TRIED TO KILL HER HUSBAND, TOO!"

"AND HE NEVER WROTE ANY OF THE SONGS HE'S PERFORMED! HECTOR RIVERA DID!"

By the end of the hour, Ernesto's bones have not only been turn apart, but also smashed to smitherines. He tries to reform, but the shards of his bones have been placed in small burlap bags. People from all over the land of the dead agree to place the sacks in their fires. His soul won't die. It will continue to exist, in a medium that allows it to see nothing, hear nothing, and feel only pain until the day comes when he is forgotten forever. Which, thanks to him, won't be for a long, long time.

* * *

By the time the Rivera family arrives home in Santa Cecilia, the events of Ernesto de la Cruz’s last concert have been printed in the local paper as well as every other publication in Mexico, major and minor. Family and friends and neighbors are waiting with hugs and condolences.

They’re not home two days before thousands of letters come pouring in from all of Mexico, many from editors Hector has written to over the years, offering gifts and condolences. Ernesto de la Cruz’s only living relative, his cousin, issues a formal apology to Hector and sends him a sizable chunk of cash.

Hector decides that he will add onto his home. He will give Oscar and Filipe their own bedrooms and give Coco and Julio their own bedroom and a nursery for the baby and set up one room just for storing and maintaining musical instruments. He will buy some extravagant gifts for Julio and Rosita’s parents to thank them for all they have done for his family. He will give Oscar and Felipe enough pesos to open their own instrument shop. He will set aside enough money to keep his children and grandchildren fed for years to come.

But before he does any of that, he orders an ornate headstone for his wife.

**Imelda Victoria Solis Rivera  
** **1899-1921  
** **Beloved wife, mother, and sister  
** **The song of Santa Cecilia  
** **Forever Remembered**

The monument in the plaza that was erected for Ernesto de la Cruz is melted down and demolished. He is quietly laid to rest in the Santa Cecilia cemetery with no mourners, no headstone, and no cross. Only mango sapling is planted atop his resting spot.

The priest officiating the funeral does Héctor the favor of addressing the elephant in the room-Imelda’s murder and the many years which have passed since her death-leaving her family free to share their fondest memories of Imelda and all the things they adored about her.

In the land of the dead, Imelda’s soul is warmed from all the love with which she is now justly remembered.

* * *

A few heads turn when Imelda Rivera approaches the marigold bridge on dia de muertos. No gimmicks, no costumes, just her, for the first time in ages.

For the first time ever, the petals glow under her boots.

She doesn’t wait. She runs over the abyss between the living and the dead, kicking up petals, nothing stopping her, nothing keeping her trapped. The lights of Santa Cecilia grow brighter and brighter until she can see the windows they’re in, and finally, her boots touch Mexican soil for the first time in twenty-two years.

She sees her gravesite, extravagant and decorated with bunches of marigolds and every other kind of flower imaginable. There are stacks of letters on it, condolences from friends, family, and strangers. She tucks them in her pockets and saves them for later. Then she keeps running.

She reaches the ofrenda next. Everything she loves is right there. Her favorite photo of herself-the one with Hector and Coco in it-her favorite foods, sheet music of her favorite songs, drawings that Coco made for her and of her as a child.

When she turns around, her heart skips a beat (or at least it would have if she still had internal organs.) Sitting in a chair, looking up at her photo, is an aged man who is so much more tired than she remembers him. But still just as beautiful.

“I missed you, amor,” he whispers.

“I missed you, too.”

She reaches out a hand to touch him, then pulls back.

There is a bundle in his arms with a head of dark curls, cheeks as red and round as tomatoes, eyes shut tight.

He shifts the baby to one arm, takes his cane, and rises to his feet. The baby’s rosy lips part to coo sweetly.

“Imelda Victoria Lopez Rivera,” Hector points to the picture at the top of the ofrenda. “This is your abuela. She loves music, and her family, and you. And one day, she’ll count on you to remember her.”

A young woman enters the room, and Imelda’s jaw drops. Tall and plump and beautiful, older than Imelda will ever be. Shining eyes, gentle hands, face full of boundless love and kindness. Her daughter. Her Coco.

“Papa, dinner is ready! And what are you doing with Victoria? She should be in bed!”

“Relax, Coco. She’s still sleeping.”

Coco smiles and places a hand on Hector’s arm. She extracts the baby girl from his arms, then motions for him to follow her. Together, Imelda, Hector, Coco, and little Victoria walk out to the courtyard.

The twins, elderly but otherwise unchanged, jostle playfully as they play hymns on their trumpets. A young man kisses Coco on the cheek as she passes by on the way to the nursery. Then he sits down beside Hector at the table, which another young woman is setting with delicacies of every flavor.

Imelda stands beside Hector, who says, “I hope you like what I’ve done with our home, Imelda.”

She does. She absolutely loves it. There’s enough space here now for generations to live and flourish.

“These empanadas are delicious, Rosita,” says Coco. “Mama would have loved them.”

“You left one for her on the ofrenda, right?” asks Hector.

“Ay, no, but I will!” Rosita promises. “Oh-wait!”

She pushes an empty chair next to Hector at the table. Imelda waits to see who will be sitting down at it, but Coco sits down on the other side of Julio, the twins sit at their usual spots at the other end, and when Julio and Rosita’s parents arrive, they sit down in a row with Rosita on the other side of the table.

Hector looks at the empty space in the seat next to him, beams, and then places an open palm on the armrest.

Hesitantly, Imelda sits down. Even more hesitantly, she slips her hand in his. She can’t feel it. Not really. Nor can he feel her. But she can see him, hear him. And he knows she’s here.

“Remember how much Mama loved queso?” Coco said wistfully. “She put it on everything.”

“And put caramel on everything else,” replied Hector. “We should have left a caramel cheese plate on the ofrenda, just for you.”

“I can still do that,” Rosita says, standing up.

“No, no,” Hector insists. “Right now, you need to sit down and enjoy this wonderful meal you’ve made.”

“Coco helped, too!” says Rosita. “And Mama brought salad!”

“Hardly,” says Rosita’s mother. “Rosita added the dressing _and_ the eggs!”

As she listens to the stories they tell at dinner, most about her, some about other relatives, Imelda feels as though she is finally part of her family again. It’s almost a dream come true. Almost.

While Rosita and her mother are clearing the table, Hector pulls out his guitar, the twins grab their trumpets, Rosita picks up a violin, and Coco and Julio change into dancing shoes. Together, everyone sings and performs _Un Poco Loco_ and _Marry Me_ and every other song that Hector wrote about Imelda or their family. It is clear that they have played this music together before, many times.

“Perhaps we should play that one at the Chapera-Alvarez wedding next week,” Rosita suggests.

“No,” said Hector. “But we _can_ play La Llorona. In fact, the mother of the bride specifically requested it. And La Fiesta Desgraciada.”

Coco laughed. “ _La Fiesta Degraciada?_ At a wedding? Wouldn’t that be more appropriate for Yadriel’s retirement party?”

“What can I say? Everyone loved it so much after we played it at the harvest festival.”

“We played _Marry Me_ at the festival, too,” Rosita points out.

“That was different. It wasn’t a wedding. That song isn’t for anyone’s love other than me and Imelda.”

When everyone else has gone to bed, Hector goes back to the ofrenda room, lit only by candlelight, and sits down.

“Mi amor…” his fingers brush the base of the shrine. “I can’t begin to apologize to you for all I have put you through. For all that I was blind to. You were right about everything. All those times that you said we shouldn’t trust Ernesto, that he didn’t mean well, that he didn’t have our best interests at heart…”

Hector lowers his head, shivering with self-loathing.

Imelda kneels down beside him.

“Twenty-two years we waited for each other because of him. I truly hope that you never have to see him again where you are, but if you do, amor, you have my full blessing to give him hell.”

Imelda smiles. “It’s already done.”

Hector takes a deep breath, looks up at her photo, and begins to sing.

_“Remember me  
_ _Though we have to say goodbye  
_ _Remember me  
_ _Don't let it make you cry  
_ _For even though you’re far away  
_ _I hold you in my heart  
_ _I sing a secret song to you  
_ _Each night we are apart  
_ _Remember me  
_ _Though you have to travel far  
_ _Remember me  
_ _Each time you hear a sad guitar  
_ _Know that I'm with you  
_ _The only way that I can be  
_ _Until you're in my arms again  
_ _Remember me”_

A tear rolls down his cheek.

Imelda kneels down, places one of her hands on each cheek, and leans in to hug him, as hard as she can without passing right through him. And when she does, she feels something. Not his skin, exactly. But his _energy._

When she pulls back, he’s smiling, and she knows that he can feel hers, too.

“I’ll see you next year. And every year after that.”


End file.
